Tabletop Fun

[Jay 2K Winger]

Dragonlance--

So we spent a good chunk of the session in a liminal space, as Evrouin spoke with his late namesake Uncle, discussing the destiny he's been told about-- to redeem the Knights of Solamnus so they can be what the world needs them to be-- and helping him come to grips with his capability to uphold their ideals and tenets (Mercy, Faith, Sacrifice). He underwent several trials, one of which saw him going back to a battle some 30 years previous where his Uncle fell, but confronted and defeated the black knight who struck him down... and then showed that knight mercy when he discovered the black knight had been tortured into treachery, allowing the black knight to get up and fight off his erstwhile allies and fall helping hold the line. (And the DM then revealed that this had actually changed history slightly-- the battle was still lost by the forces of Good, but Sir Eryl Crownguard, previously known as a traitor, is now known to have redeemed himself and died with honor.) He was transported to a village near where the battle took place, where the villagers (latterly supporting the peasant rebellion) were stricken with plague, but Evrouin used what healing skills he had to try to ease their pain and suffering, but after praying for aid from the gods, was guided to a derelict shrine of Mishakal, the Goddess of Healing, where he was able to convert the water in his waterskin to holy water, which when used on the plagued villagers, broke their fever and allowed them to recover. A third transportation a bit forward in time, the village had recovered, but now a horde of goblins, orcs, and ogres were marching on the village. Evrouin held the line so the villagers could flee, managing to keep the baddies off long enough for them to escape before going down.

The rest of the party, meanwhile, were in this sort of sacred grove, where we met with this ancient elven priest and a talking unicorn-- the latter titled the "Forest Master," a divine guardian of all forests and the creatures within-- who, among other things, bestowed all of our primary weapons with the Dragonbane property (allowing us to bypass their usual resistances to damage and magical damage), purged the evil from an amulet we took off an evil wererat cleric, and then essentially upgraded our signature items. This last part was big, because the selling point on the signature items as we went through character creation was that these items would level up with us, at certain points in the campaign. When we all reached level 3, we got one upgrade, and this is one of two "tier 2" upgrades we're receiving. Cogburn's spanner (given to him by one of his mentors) now lets him use the Flash of Inspiration property, to instantly pass any proficiency check, up to 3 times per day. (As Cog's proficiency bonus goes up as he levels up, he'll be able to use Flash of Inspiration more times as well.) Evrouin passing his trials also allowed the elven priest to give him the cleansed amulet, so when Evrouin levels up next, he can take a level as a different class of Knight, giving him access to cleric spells.

There was some more talk in the grove with the priest and unicorn concerning the enemies we'd been facing. The "Black Cloaks" weren't naturally-born creatures, but created through a combination of evil magics (arcane and divine), and had some element of the draconic in their nature. This explained why some could sprout wings, why others had large tails, and why all of them were resistant to magic.

The rest of the session was our sneaking toward the ogre-occupied city of Daltigoth, which had at least one dragon in it as well. This did involve our needing to take out an enemy patrol (which we did without much problem) and then build a raft to get across a river to the sewer entrance we earmarked as an infiltration point. Cogburn was easily able to build the raft (not least because I could use his Flash of Inspiration to instantly pass the needed check) and then use Heat Metal to effectively blowtorch the sewer grate out of the way.

Next session? Sneaking our way through Daltigoth to find the Imperial Library.

[Nunavut Pants]

More Terraforming Mars. I managed second place in one recent game. In the last turn, I pulled ahead, but the person who had been ahead came up with more points again and beat me.

I also managed third place once or twice, but the rest of the time I've been in last place. Annoying when all of the other players have a whole lot more experience playing than I do, but still fun...

[Ceir]

Well if we're sharing tabletop stuffs here - I recently got into the Final Girl series. I don't like watching horror movies at all, but I'm perfectly fine if it's abstracted out to a game like this, and it's a lot of fun!

It's a solitaire game where you're playing the eponymous Last Girl Standing from any of many many horror movies, trying to take down the murderous whatever by managing time and action resources. The gimmick is that each module has both a killer whatever and a location, and you can mix and match at will. There are currently two series of 'feature film' modules filing the serial numbers off a bunch of different movies, and a third series due soon. I think the rules work well with the theme, it makes for a lot of cinematic ideas, and there are a lot of extra trinkets like miniatures and stuff that up the cool factor but are just cosmetic upgrades. Importantly for a solitaire game, it's fun to lose, 'cause it's hard, deliberately so!

I picked up the "starter set" that has the rules and Happy Trails Horror, their riff on Jason, along with Carnage at the Carnival (Puppetmaster-ish) and Into the Void (Alien). Not done any mixing and matching yet, just playing HtH to learn the rules - and after several losses I finally pulled off a close win against Hans the hammer-wielding butcher (a bear trap and a fire axe work wonders)! Next game will be cracking open the Carnival of Chaos and Gepetto the Evil Puppet Master...

Out of the upcoming season 3, I'm really looking forward to the Terminator and Stranger Things riffs.

[Nunavut Pants]

My losing streak in Terraforming Mars continues.

A few games ago, one opponent went from 63 to 103 points on her final turn. It's common for the winner to score in the 80s, so that was an amazing turn! 40 points.

Last game, I clawed my way out of last place by the skin of my teeth. So add that to the NOT LAST tally.

Doing about 50/50 in the solo games.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Well if we're sharing tabletop stuffs here - I recently got into the Final Girl series. I don't like watching horror movies at all, but I'm perfectly fine if it's abstracted out to a game like this, and it's a lot of fun!

Hey, I have no problem with people sharing their fun experiences about their tabletop gaming sessions, solitaire or otherwise! I started it so I could have another thread somewhere to happily go on about my fun in D&D and with other games I may play.

I recently acquired a copy of a new game called Inevitable, from Soul Muppet Publishing, which describes itself as a "doomed Arthurian Western RPG," as it combines elements inspired by Arthurian myth and the Wild West. Players are generally creating groups who are setting out to try to prevent a prophesized Doom from befalling the kingdom (even though canonically in-setting, prophecies always come true), and the game is meant to lead to tragedy. I helped crowdfund it because I liked the concept, helped by the fact it cited Stephen King's Dark Tower series as part of its inspiration. For instance, much like in The Dark Tower, the Barrens of Inevitable has ruins from fallen civilizations abound, such as the poisonous ruined city of Hubris with its three derelict nuclear cooling towers, or the floating Sky Castle, which has a voice warning of a failure in its radden forge, with the warning taking the form of "an error of the four hundred and fourth order."

I recently joined the company's Discord, where I shared an experience I had from a brief online RP I did in the setting, wherein I described a ruin I called the "Inverted Tower," a structure that burrowed deep into the earth, with a staircase spiraling down into the ruins, with some kind of ancient weapons store at the bottom. (It was essentially a missile silo.) When I explained this on their Discord, one of the developers complimented the idea.

Dragonlance--

So shortly after we got into the Daltigoth sewers, we came across a circle of Solamnic Knights, whom we'd been told were in the city to gather intelligence. After making contact with them, the Misfits helped them out where we could, helping scout some warehouses where the ogres controlling the city were keeping the people they'd captured to enslave. It helped us in scouting the Imperial Library, since the warehouses were fairly close by. We also learned the ogres were being led by one called Throgg the Grinder, who'd declared himself King of Daltigoth, and was being courted by the Dragon Army's forces (i.e., the "black cloaks") to join them.

Getting into the Library wasn't too difficult, as it turned out. The orcs guarding it were bored and disgruntled about having to do guard duty at night while their fellows were all off reveling. We killed them easily enough and dragged their bodies inside, and the Library doors sealed shut behind us. We found a magical amulet which turned out to contain a copy of the intellect of the Head Librarian, Archivos, who could temporarily possess any human who wore it. (We learned that wearing it for too long would have a serious consequence, as in permanent damage to the person's INT score, but this didn't end up being too much of a concern.) Archivos' memories only went up to the day before the Cataclysm, and he was troubled that the Ergothian Empire had fallen on such hard times, but he told us where we could find the things we were looking for.

As our main goal in the Library was to retrieve some Imperial documents to return to the record keepers in Gwynned, and to determine where the Sla-Mori (secret way) was that we could take to reach Pax Tharkis, we set about doing so. My character Cogburn came in useful here, with his high Investigation score and tool proficiencies to pick locks where necessary. The Sword-Sheath Scroll and Imperial Charter turned out to be in the deepest sub-basement of the Library, which was a sort of emergency bunker, and after opening it, we found that all of the librarians were still at work, while also being quite dead. Including Archivos himself, who was given his amulet (a badge of office) back. (Bob the DM compared the librarians to Liches, albeit non-Evil ones.) We were permitted to take the scroll and charter-- after accepting a geas to return them to the proper authorities in Gwynned-- but we also found out that the Sla-Mori was beneath the Imperial Palace, and opening it required the key, which was the Imperial Scepter, currently held by Throgg the Grinder.

So our next step is going to be working out how to get into the Palace without aggro'ing 150 ogres, countless orcs and goblins, Black Cloaks, and a motherfucking black dragon.

[Nunavut Pants]

I finally won Terraforming Mars again! Woo hoo! After a dozen or two games!

I started with one of the heat-centric corporations; this one let you trade up to four heat per turn for double that amount of money. It came in handy a few times. It also starts you with some heat production, which I was quickly able to add on to. One of the Milestones was to have 20 heat, so I let my heat levels build for two turns until I hit that mark. Then I could trade in the heat to raise the Martian temperature, and use some of it for money.

Another milestone was to have plant/animal/microbe tagged cards played. I had a couple that were fairly low cost that I could play, and wound up able to get enough to claim the Milestone by playing a microbe card that didn't do anything for me. ("Add a microbe to another card" when I never got any cards that accumulated microbes!) Another player claimed the "play several event cards" Milestone, so no more Milestones were claimable.

I had gotten a City card or two that I played in that run-up (I think one of them may have had a plant tag on it, which is why I played it?) and I realized that one of the Awards was to have the most City tiles on the board, so I started trying to play as many as I could. And another Award was to have the most VPs generated by cities (which in effect means the most forest tiles adjacent to cities). I had played a number of plant-tagged cards so my plant production was good, and I was able to place forest tiles next to my cities. That put me in the lead for two Awards, which I then funded, while trying to continue placing City tiles and forest tiles. Nobody else funded the final Award space; there was one player who was ahead in the three remaining possible categories but I don't think he could scrape up the 20 money to fund the last Award.

That, plus placing the final Ocean tile to make sure the game ended that turn, ran me out of money so I wound up ending my turn relatively early. It was up to everyone else to try to catch my sizeable lead.

At the end, I didn't have many VPs on my cards, but I had a decent Terraform Rating, plus two Milestones and first place in two Awards, plus a lot of VPs from my cities and forests on the map.

I won, 84 to 81 to 62 to 61. The second player got close, but not close enough.

I WIN I WIN I WIN!!!!! Second victory!

[Ceir]

Well then! Play report time. Since my last post I finally opened up Into the Void, the Alien pastiche for Final Girl, and that's one I've been eagerly awaiting.

It's a faily complex map and killer combination, but the gameplay is super thematic - the map is of course the ship, and all the items are your keycards and gadgets and such (yes, there is a power loader); the killer is naturally the alien that evolves from hatchling to juvenile to adult as it happily murders its way along, completely with (potentially) acid blood, whip tail, all the fun stuff. Done a couple of runs at it now.

Astoundingly, my very first game was a win. The first time that's ever happened in my FG plays, and it's on this module? The odds are long to say the least. I accidentally cheesed it so hard I had to reread the rules, but: playing 'Ellen' (natch - good at searching for stuff), saved a couple victims, had some dice fails, the xenomorph evomorph evolved to its juvenile stats, and then after a couple more murders I pulled an event card that caused a hull breach in one particular space; specifying that anything entering that map space was killed. After a little more running around and a few more victim deaths, I drew a beacon item that the killer would prioritize above all else for targeting its movement and attacks for a couple turns. You can see where this is going. Ellen gets just close enough to fastball the beacon into the busted escape pod, then keycard a vent shut; the evomorph goes after the beacon and out the hole it goes, failing the "not really dead" check that both killer and protagonist characters get the first time they run out of health. Boom, victory?...after rereading the relevant rules a couple of times...yes, victory!

Second game was a loss, though at least it was quite a cinematic one. Using the other character in the set, 'Janelle' (a reference to the actress who played Vasquez, and get better use out of tech items), and this one was a knock-down-drag-out. Lots more alien murders, throwing victims into escape pods, a couple turns of actual back and forth combat, using keycards to activate map gimmicks, the works. Genuine narrative tension when the evomorph disappeared off the map, popped back up halfway across the board, and evolved to its full adult stats in the span of like two turns plus an ambush card. I had a good position and setup, even mitigating RNG almost enough - but there was one card I didn't do the math correctly for and just flat ran out of health. Failed my "not really dead" save as Janelle slugged it out claws-to-vibroblade with the sucker in the flaming incinerator room. I got splatted, it had three HP left. Sequel bait to the max!

[Jay 2K Winger]

D&D AL: Rime of the Frostmaiden--

We got word of this wrecked pirate ship stuck on the frozen coast of a lake which may still have had some treasure on it. So, being a party of adventurers, we went to go see what we could find. We had a brief combat encounter with an ice troll, and then started searching the ship. Turned out it had indeed been a pirate ship belonging to a renowned, notorious pirate called Captain Bluemoon, whose body we found in his quarters, having drank himself to death after his ship was wrecked. We found some coin and whatnot as we explored the main deck and main quarters, before heading into the hold. There was a pile of treasure buried under layers of ice, but to get it out, we'd need tools to dig it out. (The DM said it would take hours and hours to thaw it out with fire.) So I had Rhoric, my half-elf sorcerer, head for the door into the next room, when the DM says, "Give me a DEX saving throw."

I rolled a 5. The DM said, "That's still better than my 4." He described a javelin missing Rhoric's head by a hair, and we entered combat against a pack of 4 kobolds, but after one of our monks killed the first in on blow, the others surrendered. Turned out the kobolds were servants of "the great one," a dragon of course, and we just told them to get out. They ran away, and we plundered the rest of the hold before digging out the treasure. Though it must be noted that before they fled, we discovered the kobolds had a trench coat (which they'd been using as a blanket to sleep on), and so one of the monks in the party decided to teach them how to ride on one another's shoulders and wear the coat to hide this, thus canonically making the "three kobolds in a trenchcoat" meme into a thing.

Lots of coins, some magical items, including one that-- thanks to a decent History and Arcana check from me-- turned out to be a Wand of Orcus. Orcus, for those unfamiliar with D&D lore, is a powerful demon lord, and I was immediately wary of even handling it. The DM suggested if someone to attune to it, they could use it properly, and I (as Rhoric) cautioned against it-- until the DM then revealed that Rhoric could tell that this was actually just a very good replica of a Wand of Orcus, and would only serve as a +1 mace or club. (This is good, because attuning to an actual Wand of Orcus would do one of two things, depending on whether someone passed a CON save-- either deal a high amount of necrotic damage, or outright kill the person and turn them into a zombie.)

Among the things we found with Captain Bluemoon's body had been his journal, and the DM wanted us to read it, so I flavored it as Rhoric (who is not a very physically-capable character) reading through it while others dug out the treasure. The DM asked us to describe adventures we found described in the journal, so we took it in turn to do so. One player described a tale in which Captain Bluemoon learned that his one true love had been abducted by a swordsman, a giant, and a mastermind, and rushed back home to rescue her. When we all realized he was describing The Princess Bride, we all groaned but found it hilarious. We described a few more, and the DM awarded every player 2 Heroic Inspiration. I was wondering about why he would do so, but I found out shortly.

We spent a long enough time digging out all this treasure that we noticed a storm blowing up-- not too surprising, the Icewind Dale being locked in a perpetual winter-- but we also heard the beating of large wings. We all took shelter and hid in the cargo hold, and then we saw a huge dragon's head poke into the hold from a hole in the deck, and realized two things. This was an Ancient White Dragon-- the largest and most powerful of the white dragon species-- and it was so old that it had cataracts in its eyes. Not that this meant it couldn't detect us-- it could hear our heartbeats, but couldn't tell where we were on the ship.

It started searching the main deck for us, and we then had to figure out what to do. This was an Ancient Dragon, a high-level threat for any party, let alone one at level 8. We stood no chance against it in a fight. One of our monks-- the drunken one-- looked contemplative about trying it, and I just looked at him.

Me: You cannot grapple the dragon.
Him: ...you don't know that.
Me: I do know that. This is a gargantuan creature. It can pass your grapple check without even trying.

We were still wondering how we could possibly get away from this thing, when suddenly our cleric revealed: "I have Pass Without a Trace." This is a spell which gives everyone in range of the caster a bonus +10 to all Stealth checks. (The DM later noted, when the cleric revealed this, he internally thought, "Fuck.") This allowed us all to pass the necessary Stealth checks (though I had to burn both Heroic Inspirations I had received to do it, as I kept rolling low single-digits before the Stealth bonuses) to get to the deck, and then over the side to climb down the ladder. We were recovered by a firbolg huntress (who had also rescued our sled dogs) and were able to make it home, but the wholesale terror I felt at finding ourselves up against an end-game level threat was a fantastic thing.

In other D&D-related news, one of my former roommates had expressed interest on Facebook on getting back into D&D, and I recommended AL to him. He joined the AL Discord last night, and I spent some time chatting with him on Discord, explaining some of how AL worked and giving him some confidence that AL might be a good fit for someone trying to get back into the game.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Dragonlance--

So it was time for us to storm the castle! ...er, palace. Storm the palace.

The macguffin we needed was (we thought) still in there, in the hands of this enormous ogre called Throgg the Grinder. But as infiltrating the palace to get it had a very real risk of kicking the hornets' nest and making the intel work of the knights more dangerous, we consulted them. They agreed to help, but sent word back to both the Ergothian Empire and the Knights of Solamnus back in Sancrist to ask for aid, giving them a two week head start before we'd do our thing. We'd need to lay low in the safehouse for a week, since the ogres would be on alert after the slave-freeing raid the knights had done, and then we'd have a week to work out ways of reducing the headcount around the palace.

We took a three-part plan. Step one, sow discord among the orcs-- Catt went around stealing borrowing things from orcs and reverse-pickpocketing them into other orcs' pockets. Step two, get the orcs and ogres away from the palace somehow-- they tended to have keggers every night, so Evrouin and Runa doctored up notices about a big party on the other side of the city and spread them around. Step three, spike the booze-- the orcs and ogres are pretty resistant to poison, so Cogburn just brewed up some nearly pure alcohol and had Justinius spike the kegs.

And it worked! As we snuck toward the palace on the big night, we passed gibbets with orcs hanging from them, labeled with signs reading "THIEF," and a lot of pass-out drunk orcs, goblins, and ogres. We got in the palace, merked the ogre working as a cook in the kitchen, then got into the ballroom, where a lot of ogres and more of the "Black Cloaks" were all pass-out drunk, but there were two other ogres who weren't passed out yet, a bunch of goblin waiters, and Throgg himself. Battle kicked off, but we were able to keep up and take out everyone, with Evrouin landing the final blow on Throgg, with the one-liner, "Grind this!"

One amusing bit afterward was Justinius identifying these "rings" that Throgg had been wearing were actually Bracers of Strength (which boost the wearer's STR score to 22), and then failing to convince anyone that they were actually Bracers of Intelligence so he could try to keep them for himself.

With the majority of the problems in the palace dealt with (we sealed the doors of the palace shut so none of the baddies could get inside), we got to the Imperial chambers where we expected to find the macguffin among the imperial regalia. Apart from a brief encounter with a mimic (which nearly killed Cogburn), we discovered that the macguffin/regalia was not there-- and then realized why. The Emperor had fled like ~350 years previous when Daltigoth had fallen, and would of course have taken the regalia with him. The scepter we needed was back in Gwynned. I described it as Cogburn turning to Justinius and saying, "We're both very smart-- why didn't either of us realize this?!"

And that was when the Black Dragon tore open the roof.

We were all very alarmed, as we had to face off against the Dragon and two Black Cloaks. The Dragon was also a spellcaster, as Justinius realized it was trying to cast Fireball and so Counterspelled it, which just irritated it, so it hit him with a Polymorph spell and turned him into a ferret. And since everyone at the table refused to meta-game-- a Polymorph can be "broken" by dealing enough damage to the creature, but none of our characters knew this-- that left us down a wizard. One of the Cloaks was a spellcaster too, but it kept trying to lock down Evrouin by catching him with a Hold Person spell which he kept resisting. Runa the Barbarian saw a chance to try to realize her destiny of becoming a dragon-rider by leaping onto the Dragon's back and trying to beat it into submission, but when she wouldn't be shaken off, it just hit her with a Charm Person spell to stop her attacking it.

The knights accompanying us paid dividends by managing to damage the Dragon pretty significantly before it flew into the air and hit them all with its acid breath. As they lay dying in agony, Evrouin made a hasty prayer to the gods for aid, and his amulet started glowing as the knights all stabilized, effectively casting the Spare the Dying spell. But Cogburn hitting the Dragon with a Fire Bolt finally caused it to drop its concentration on the Polymorph and restoring Justinius to normal, pissing off the Dragon, who threw Runa to the floor in a rage, then blasted her and Justinius with its acid breath. They were both able to reduce the damage taken thanks to her Rage and his using Absorb Elements, but then it hit nearly everyone with a Fireball. Evrouin threw his body atop his friend Sir Caramond, which is the only reason why Caramond survived-- every other knight was killed by the blast. Runa was able to kill the Dragon with a Hasted turn, snarling out, "You were supposed to be mine!"

We still had death saves to go, however, since people had been downed by the fireball. I was lucky enough to roll a Nat-20, meaning I came back to consciousness, and then used my healer's kit to recover some of Caramond's HP, so he came back up as well. Cogburn told him he survived because Evrouin had shielded his body, and went to use the healer's kit on Evro, as Caramond prayed for aid as well, successfully restoring some of Evro's HP too.

From there, we got up on the roof to see the ogres and orcs were all trying to get into the palace, but we could hear and then see the approach of the Ergothian Empire's army as well as the Knights of Solamnus, who rode out and routed the hostiles. Lord Gunther, the head of the Knights, found us, as did Emperor Mercador XVI, who expressed gratitude for liberating his palace. He agreed to open the Sla-Mori (secret way) to Pax Tharkis for us, while Gunther (after hearing from his son Caramond) asked Evrouin if it was true the gods had returned. Evro replied, "They never left." Lord Gunther then had Evrouin kneel, pledging to hold true to his oaths and honor and to the faith of the gods, and named him a Knight of the Sword. (Evrouin is essentially now a cleric.)

As we set out through the Sla-Mori, however, Justinius suddenly got a scroll from his wizardly mentor and realized he was being called to take his Test of High Sorcery, to officially become a wizard. And we all just dragged him through the portal off to take his final exam.

In other news, we're going to be playing games now at Eric's house instead of at the store where we'd been playing. Camilla's taking a new position at her job which has her working on Saturdays, and rather than have her drop from the campaign, we all just figured out when to have our sessions instead and settled on Fridays. But Fridays are extremely busy at the store and there'd be even less guarantee we'd be able to get a table. Plus side to this is we can have background music playing during our sessions.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Dragonlance--

This session was about Justinius's Test of High Sorcery. So there was the lead-up to it and then the actual test itself. There was a fun little bit of cross-campaign cameo as DM Bob had the satyr Puck and the "Elkridge Boys" (a herd of elk) turn up to offer the party a ride to the Wayreth Tower of High Sorcery. (Puck had been an NPC that Bob would summon as Caradoc in our Mysteries of Albia campaign, and Caradoc would routinely summon the Elkridge Boys to stampede over enemy encounters.) We got a little taxonomy on the Draconians (the "Black Cloaks" we'd been fighting) and some rest and recuperation after the fights in the previous session. Although Runa the barbarian was being bothered by visions of roaring flames and screaming people.

Justinius got some one-on-one conversations with a couple of members of the party, too. He went to Sir Evrouin to ask how he'd felt before his big trials, and Evro told him he'd been terrified. When Justinius had admitted to regretting the losses of the knights in the fight against the dragon, Evro commiserated, and told him, "Pray it doesn't get any easier." While at the same time telling him that he, Evro, had no regrets or feelings of failure for the battle, stating there was only so much anyone could do against a dragon.

Then Justinius got a visit from Runa, who could tell that Justinius was troubled about something. Admitting again to his nerves before his test, Justinius mentioned that he'd spent a long time trying to be like his mentor, Master Pah, and worried that he wouldn't measure up. Runa encouraged him to stop trying to be someone else and to be himself.

Justinius: "...and what if who I am isn't very good?
Runa: "...then let's be bad together."

It left everyone a bit surprised. Justinius also told the party they didn't need to accompany him on his test, since doing so put them at risk of death if he failed. To which my character, Cogburn, said, "I've nearly died several times in our journey, and don't think I haven't realized you've saved my life several of those times. This is the least I can do in exchange." For his test, Justinius was sent by the Wizards Conclave to "bring to justice" a renegade wizard called Demos. How he defined "bring to justice" among other things would determine which Order of High Sorcery he would be inducted to. (White Robes = Good-aligned, Red Robes = Neutral-aligned, Black Robes = Evil-aligned)

Well, as we proceeded through the cave where Demos was hiding out, we faced off against waves of lesser renegades, starting with apprentices, then mages, in greater numbers. In the first wave, Runa went down and her body vanished in a swirl of mist - no chance of reviving her. Then, in the second wave, Cogburn went down immediately, and Evro was quick behind him. Leaving Justinius alone against five mages, but Jesse showed an incredible awareness of everything at his disposal and how to make the most of his abjuration magic to defend himself. He trapped two mages in an incapacitated condition with a Hypnotic Pattern spell, then kept using a literal shield-wall that he and Cogburn had made as cover while trying to burn through the mages' spell slots. He kept rolling well enough with his concentration checks to maintain the Hypnotic Pattern, but when he finally got through all five, he was down to 9 HP and only three spell slots, and knew that Demos was waiting ahead, explicitly described as an Archmage-level wizard.

Which is why none of us at the table were surprised when Justinius found himself meeting Fistandantilus again in his study. The evil wizard smugly commented that Justinius looked like he was having a rough time, and Justinius actually told him, "Fuck you." Fistandantilus took this in stride (though cautioned him to mind his tone) and once more extended his offer of assistance. Justinius deliberated about it, but accepted it. He gave up some of his life force to the evil wizard (permanently knocking his CON score down by 2) and causing his white robes to turn red, then was given an incantation to use against Demos. When Justinius walked out of the study and into Demos's lair, he immediately pointed his finger at Demos and recited the incantation, causing the renegade wizard to drop dead on the spot.

Justinius had essentially just cast the spell Power Word Kill.

He was transported back to the Wizards Conclave, where the party was waiting for him. We were shocked. Master Pah was crestfallen. Justinius was inducted into the Order of the Red Robes, and then he had a private conversation with Master Pah, who said he was glad he could still greet him as a brother in the Art, but he could no longer call him a brother as an Elf. He took him to another room, where Justinius' family was waiting for him. His father, looking ashen, told him that his name was stricken from the Book of Life, he was banished from his homeland of Qualinest, and he was henceforth known as Justinius the Dark. Making him a "dark elf," which doesn't mean a drow or anything like that, but that he was exiled from elven society.

After receiving his new wizard's staff, the Stroke of Brilliance, we were rejoined by Catt, our team's kender. Camilla, who plays Catt, wasn't there this week and so Catt had sat out the test, as it was explained that kender were not allowed to join in. But when Catt came up to us, she had this ruby rod in her hand that she'd "found" and pointed it at Evro, accidentally zapping him and making him disappear. "Oops."

To be continued next week! (Evro's disappearance is to cover for Mike's absence next Friday.)

[Jay 2K Winger]

Dragonlance--

Mike was absent, but this week's session covered our rescue of his character Evro. This was also our first Friday session with our new schedule to accommodate Camilla's new work schedule, now playing at Eric's house. Which means we can now have music playing in the background.

So the rod that Catt found and zapped Evro with was a Rod of Banishment, and had accidentally sent Evro to the lower plane of Pandemonium. Par-Salian, the Master of the Conclave, rather quickly cast Time Stop to catch us up to speed on what had happened and what we could do. He could send us there to rescue Evro, and give Justinius a medallion that would let him cast Plane Shift to get everyone back home-- but warned that mortals could only last about 3 days in Pandemonium before it would consume them. (Mechanically, every day we spent there would add levels of exhaustion-- but they would rack up more quickly than just one per day. And at six levels of exhaustion, you drop dead.) So we were encouraged to not dawdle.

Our trip through Pandemonium was basically a string of combat encounters, getting attacked first by dretches (lesser demons), shadow demons (tougher), and then a barlgura (a powerful ape-like demon), before we had to take a short rest to recoup some HP. The shadow demons in particular afflicted their victims with visions of their worst fear (Runa heard the roaring flames and screams again; Cogburn was plagued with the idea that he might not complete his Life Quest to go to the moon-- which I flavored as him having an existential crisis about a key fact about Pandemonium: "There's no moon-- there's no moon!"), but the barlgura was finished off when Justinius walked up to it and cast Inflict Wounds, causing the demon to just sort of shrivel up and die. Jesse noted that that spell was one that had been on his list of spells for a while, but this was the first time he'd actually cast it.

During the short rest, there came at least the first part of the Serious Discussion the party needed to have with Justinius, regarding what they'd seen him do during his Test of High Sorcery. Everyone's perspective was largely along the lines of, "Bro, what the fuck?" since he'd generally been more the abjuration wizard rather than offensive, and to see him suddenly stride into Demos's lair and kill him with a word was a rather shocking change. A defensive Justinius argued that since he'd joined the party, he'd primarily been working to keep them safe and protected with his defense magics, but they kept having problems going down, and then the knights they'd met in Daltigoth had died, and he'd realized the best way to keep them protected was by dealing with threats as quickly as possible. Cogburn was still troubled by it, but did say to him, "You've got one of the most brilliant minds I've ever seen, and to see you turning that mind to new and efficient ways of killing things is more than a little disturbing." By and large, our stance was it's going to take time to adjust to the new normal.

The final encounter was facing off against a greater demon called a Glabrezu, which had a comatose Evro suspended above a cauldron and was having him slowly lowered toward it. Fighting the glabrezu was difficult-- like most demons, it was resistant to fire and lightning damage (which comprised most of my offensive capabilities)-- but we managed to bring it down and rescue Evro, who was able to use his new divinely-granted magic to heal Runa (who'd been downed in the fight) before we plane shifted back to the Conclave Tower.

After a night's rest in the tower, we were transported back to the secret way leading to Pax Tharkis (the next stage of our journey to find the lost dwarf city of Thorbardin), and when we emerged out of it, we found ourselves apparently stepping out into the middle of a wedding party. We're literally wedding crashers.

[Ceir]

Made it to the FLGS board game night for a bit this week. Sat in on a game of Takenoko, I remain good at neither panda- nor garden-keeping.

They also got in my order of some more Final Girl stuff, and I splurged a bit. Got my order of Killer From Tomorrow (Terminator) and The Falconwood Files (Stranger Things) from season 3, both of them look gimmicky in interesting ways. Also picked up the season 1 Haunting of Creech Manor, which is their version of Poltergeist - as a killer, the poltergeist is definitely the most RNG-dependent because instead of defeating it directly you win by finding the obligatory Possessed Little Kid in the randomized inventory and GTFO'ing. Very doable, just very swingy; I think the writers learned from it because it's a thing the later seasons have moved away from. Quite happy to pick up the Manor as a module location though, it's a dense and interconnected map that will make several different killers play in interesting ways. The other things I grabbed are all three of the 'vignettes' mini-expansions, which are based around hordes/minions or weird gimmicks without a full-bore killer or map of their own, just add them to a location. They're all titled 'Terror From...' something; Above is The Birds, The Grave is any various zombies, and Destiny is Final Destination.

Fun stuff, looking forward to throwing some dice at things when I have the time.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Dragonlance--

We opened with a brief rewind to before resuming our journey, so that Evrouin could have his own Serious Discussion with Justinius about his recent shift in alignment. Being that Evrouin is now effectively the party's cleric, he had Views about it. He's also the only one in the party to be aware of Justinius's encounters with Fistandantilus, and had Views about that as well.

But after that whole thing, it turned out the wedding we inadvertently crashed was between Goldmoon and Riverwind, and the wedding party included a group known as the Heroes of the Lance. As in, the central characters of several of the actual Dragonlance books. Timeline wise from those, this took place after the demise of the villain Verminaard. But there were some major conversations that took place between our band of Misfits and the Heroes...

Runa Firebrand, our barbarian, discovered that her desert nomad tribe was almost wiped out by the Red Dragonarmy, and that her mother (the chieftain) had died along with most of the tribe's warriors trying to fight off a dragon. She broke down over it, going into a bit of a Rage, but the spirits of her mother and grandmother appeared to her and encouraged her to keep going, and that the tribe needed her. Runa's still not doing okay, but she's shifted her drive from "riding a dragon" to "killing all dragons."

Justinius, meanwhile, found himself drawn into a conversation with Raistlin Majere, another one of the Heroes and another Red Robe wizard. Raistlin revealed that he, too, had been approached by and accepted the bargain of Fistandantilus, and warned about the side effects of such bargains. He was interested in when Justinius mentioned the banner of the Blue Dragonarmy that we'd acquired way back in our pirate-hunting days, and used this to Scry on someone, only mentioning "I'm coming, sister." He taught Justinius the Speak with Dead spell as well as the basics of "blood magic," to literally let him regain spell slots by temporarily casting from his CON score. (And yes, I made a joke about "Blood Wizards" and "Crip Wizards," leading to the DM joking that Snoop's gonna show up in Blue Robes.)

Sir Evrouin Brightblade met his cousin, Sturm Brightblade, who was being called "Sir Sturm" by his companions, and ... well, they had a private conversation where Sturm admitted to Evro that he never got knighted. Sturm had been evacuated from Castle Brightblade 30 years previously, and raised in the small city of Solace in the interim, before traveling with the others. He'd gone to the ruins of his family castle to reclaim his father's armor and heirloom sword (the namesake Brightblade), defeating a green knight to earn them, but then when he tried to apply to the Knighthood in Sancrist, he was blocked from doing so by Lord Derek Crownguard. But when Sturm rejoined his friends, they saw him wearing the armor and assumed he'd been knighted, and he hadn't corrected them. Evro, as the ranking knight present, had to pass judgment on this, and his judgment was basically, "Your heart's in the right place, but stop wearing that armor and under no circumstances call yourself 'Sir' or a knight until you've earned it." Sturm did so immediately, and they parted as friends and kin.

It came out during that conversation that Sturm had been traveling with Raistlin, his brother Caramon Majere, and their half-sister, Kitiara. As soon as I heard that name, my brain went ping, because I remembered that name from the letters we'd recovered from the pirate vessel we'd captured early in the campaign. Kitiara uth Matar is a high-ranking member of the Blue Dragonarmy.

We eventually moved on through the secret ways to find the gates to Thorbardin, the mountain dwarf capital. We'd been primed with the right verbiage to speak when we got them to open the gates, and were met by armed, boar-mounted guards, led by Arman Kharas, elder son of the thane we needed to see, and brother to the dwarf whose death we were bringing news about. We brought that news to the Thane of the Hylar, Hornfel, and then asked if he could perhaps give sanctuary to the refugees that were at Pax Tharkis. Hornfel was sympathetic, but said it would require the council of thanes to agree, and they hadn't been able to agree to even elect a new Highking in over a century.

Because, it turns out, choosing a new Highking of Thorbardin requires the candidate to forge themselves a "kingsword," which can only be done with a specific hammer, the Hammer of Honor, which had been entombed in the last king's crypt, which was currently magically suspended at the top of the mountain, at the top of a 7000-foot shaft. So now we have to work out how to get up there, get inside, and then get back out to return the hammer to the thanes.

[Nunavut Pants]

...I made a joke about "Blood Wizards" and "Crip Wizards," ...

Crypt Wizards? Oh, you mean Necromancers!