Tabletop Fun

[Jay 2K Winger]

Dragonlance--

Another RP-heavy session, which got bogged down by logistical stuff in the early part. In the wake of his father's death, Evrouin had to spend a month at his family's keep, learning the basics of running said keep and all the other duties that entail being a noble lord. This meant we had to figure out what our party members were doing during this month's time. My cleric Gavin spent that time performing sacred rites at the keep and beginning to train new aspirant clerics. Runa the barbarian spent her days helping train the rank-and-file soldiery, largely in what to do when facing less heavily-armored combatants (since she's a dexterity-based barbarian rather than a strength-based one), and spent her evenings meditating and deepening her connection with her barbarian Path of the Ancestral Guardian features, basically boiling down to her learning the ins and outs of her new access to the Augury and Clairvoyance spells.

Where it got bogged down was with Justinius. DM Bob had sprung this month's downtime thing on us at the table, rather than telling us ahead of time to allow for planning. Jesse initially wanted to get started on creating another Pocket Nuke, but Bob put the kibosh on that. A miscommunication about the limitations of the Dream spell led to Jesse assuming that it would be useless against high-level NPCs (since he had aims on using it to intimidate and/or deliver psychic damage to a boss), as any NPC with access to "legendary actions" or "legendary resistances" (in D&D terms, these are capabilities that allow some high-level enemies to take actions outside their turn of initiative order, or auto-pass saving throws) would be immune to the psychic damage thing.

Jesse pivoted instead to making more of his "spell coins." Fairly early in our party's travels, we came across a cache containing several thousand golden coins from the pre-Cataclysm Ergothian Empire. Thing is, by the time of the campaign, gold is worthless and steel is used in its stead. While we'd traded several of these coins in to an Ergothian bureau and got paid for turning in "ancient artifacts," Justinius had kept a great many of these coins, and had been using them by casting a Glyph of Warding on the coin, priming it with a spell like Haste, and setting the trigger to be some password. But when he tried to make one during this downtime period, using his Blood Magic, the DM decided to have them do "rollies" with a d100. ("Rollies" is basically each person rolling the same die and seeing who gets the better number.) Jesse got a 75-- but Bob rolled a 100. He said that Justinius got one coin made, but the next day, when he finished his rest, his constitution had not recovered. See-- his Blood Magic works by his willingly lowering his CON score by 1, and he would just recover that loss with his Long Rest. But in this case, it did not recover, and it was implied that it might not work again either. So his CON score was now permanently reduced, thus also lowering his max HP.

Jesse wanted to return to the Wayreth Tower of High Sorcery, to perhaps conduct his studies there, but while he had a way to get to the Tower quickly, he didn't have a similar way to get back, as he couldn't rely on Amaranth Pah agreeing to transport him, and he didn't want to lose some of the downtime by traveling. He also tried to offload the rest of the Ergothian coins by selling them to the gnomes (since the gold might be useful in their artificing, for wiring and such), but got much less money back for it. He eventually did research and learn the Dream spell, after Bob clarified that it wasn't that the Dream spell wouldn't work against high-level NPCs, it just would not deal the psychic damage if he tried to use that feature. It was still potentially useful in gathering information, communicating, or otherwise sending messages.

The session proper was about getting to the Tomb of Huma Dragonbane. It was a known thing that there was a great store of dragonmetal beneath the hero's tomb, and said tomb was on the subcontinent of Sancrist. Gavin had even been there when Huma was interred there. But, as he pointed out, his knowledge of its whereabouts was 1200+ years and a geographically cataclysmic upheaval out of date. He knew it was south of a place called the Whitestone Glade, so we headed there before going into the forest south of it, which was already fouling Gavin's potential navigation-- the forest hadn't been there 1200 years ago. Both Gavin and Evrouin did their commune spells, to try to seek guidance from their gods, and got some useful insight-- Got received a message of "Humility, Honor, Trust, Valor, Sacrifice" and Evrouin a more direct "Follow your heart."

Eventually, Evrouin got a glimpse of the White Stag-- a figure that has great significance in the legends of the Solamnic Knights-- and went chasing after it, and when the party tried to follow, each found themselves separated from the others. Justinius was confronted by a White Robe wizard, who eventually identified himself as Magius, one of Huma's closest friends and a legendary wizard, who grilled him about why he was worthy to seek Huma's Tomb. Justinius deferred passing judgment on himself, and said he wanted the dragonmetal to forge dragonlances to help save the world, pointing out how Magius had wanted the same thing in his time, but Magius replied that he sacrificed himself to save his friend, and eventually decided that Justinius "wasn't ready yet."

Runa found herself approaching the cave where she (during our Session Zero) had faced the Flame Guardian, the spiritual guardian of her tribe. The Guardian tried to offer some comfort after her tribe's decimation-- "every flame must sputter out before it can be rekindled"-- and then tried to advise her about controlling her Rage. As he put it, she was trying to dominate it, rather than harness it, which would only lead to it consuming her. He taught her how to bring that Rage nearly to the bursting point, and then let it subside, bring it back up, and then bank it back down. In the end, she can now mechanically call upon one of two aspects of her Rage capabilities without expending a Rage, so long as she hasn't taken damage yet. (At the table, we referred to the training as "Runa learns about Edging." If you don't know what that means, suffice to say you shouldn't google that at work.)

Gavin found himself face to face with the human form of Heart, Huma's silver dragon mate and mount. Who had also been sister to Gavin's wife Gwyneth. Heart was surprised to see him, as she was fully cognizant of the passage of time and everything. After he explained what had happened with him, and that he and Gwyneth had had children, she explained that she and other entities were helping to protect Huma's Tomb, and that in the wake of the Cataclysm, the Gods of Good had removed it from the material plane for that purpose. She told Gavin that it wasn't his quest to find the Tomb, but rather Evrouin's, and he calmly stated his faith in the knight. Then the two sat down at a campfire so they could catch up and he could tell her about her niece and nephew.

Evrouin had to face another series of trials. First, he found himself watching a confrontation between a Solamnic Knight and Kaz the Minotaur, who were evenly matched. The Knight sought to slay Kaz, as "a creature of Evil" (minotaurs in the Dragonlance setting are almost always on the Evil side) and refused to believe any claims to the contrary. Evro realized the Knight (based on his armor) was from a time immediately before the Cataclysm, when the forces of Good had become too prideful, forced the Knight to realize he wasn't as virtuous as he thought, since Evro had the favor of the gods when most knights didn't. And when he identified the minotaur as Kaz-- a boon companion to Huma Dragonbane-- the Knight immediately begged forgiveness, and Kaz just led him away to tell him tales of Huma.

The next trial saw him coming to the sounds of a woman screaming, as he found a Black Robe wizard confronting a screaming woman. Evro initially told the Wizard to stand down, but was told "You don't know what you're meddling in!" When the woman's scream briefly invoked some paralysis, Evro realized she was a Banshee, and so fought her instead of the Wizard, who helped him put her down. The Wizard told him he acted with honor, and Evro apologized for the assumption he'd made. The Wizard, who introduced himself as Magius, just told him not to judge a book by its cover.

The trial of trust was basically a variant of the empty chasm test from Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade, where Evro had to confidently stride across a large pit and put his faith (i.e. trust) in the gods. The trial of valor saw him confronting an incarnation of the death knight Lord Soth. The two saluted one another before clashing, with Evro eventually forcing Soth to yield. The final trial came as he entered Huma's Tomb, where he saw a statue of Huma holding a fine-looking sword, which whispered to him to "Take me up. It has been so long since I've tasted the blood of dragons." It promised him glory if he slaughtered every chromatic dragon, but Evrouin remembered a tale of Huma similarly being tempted with power and casting it aside, so he did the same here.

And so Evrouin had passed his trials, and met the spirit of Huma Dragonbane, who guided him to pray in the tomb's chapel of Paladine, where the god himself appeared to ask if they wanted the Tomb returned to the material plane. When they confirmed this, Paladine warned them it would take more than dragonlances to win the war to come, but the Tomb was put back, and the party entered it to see a lake of liquid dragonmetal beneath it. We now only need to make contact with Elistan, who is a cleric of Paladine, so that we have all the macguffins in place for forging dragonlances again.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Dragonlance--

No combat action this week, and very little dice-rolling. It was a roleplay-heavy session in the aftermath of Jesse's Pocket Nuke.

Justinius spoke with his Red Robe mentor, catching him up on what he had been doing since passing his Test of High Sorcery. Said mentor was astonished to hear about Justinius not only finding, but managing to use a Dragon Orb. This was something that even very powerful mages had failed to do-- King Lorac, the elven king of Sylvanesti who had been trapped in an unending screaming nightmare by trying to use a Dragon Orb, was one such mage-- but Justinius had managed to pull it off and drive off a Great Wyrm Dragon in the process. This got Justinius promoted to the rank of Master within the Order of the Red Robes, and also earned him a spot on the Wizard Conclave.

After getting his promotion, Justinius was given his own bigger-on-the-inside set of chambers in the Tower, and after he showed it off to the rest of the Misfits, we had our first big Serious Talk of the session. Because, for all that the Pocket Nuke had gotten us out of Neraka without a major fight, it was the secrecy of his creating it that had shattered a lot of the trust the party had for him. Gavin was furious that he'd been made complicit in (what he viewed as) the murder of "unborn children," regardless of what was going to happen to said children if they weren't rescued. The Pocket Nuke also being set with what they all viewed as too simplistic a trigger-- that is "if anyone other than Justinius opens the book"-- was seen as reckless and irresponsible. Justinius tried to defend himself against that by pointing out he kept it in his Bag of Holding, but it was also pointed out that the party includes a kender, a race that is known for their curiosity and tendency to steal borrow without permission. Justinius, however, was largely unapologetic about what he had done, and offered no defense about his secrecy in crafting the Pocket Nuke. Even Runa the Barbarian, who has been someone more defensive of the wizard, was upset that he'd kept his cutting (Blood Magic) secret from her, having believed their developing relationship would have netted her more trust with that knowledge.

In the end, it was only the kender Catt who wasn't extremely upset about the Pocket Nuke, and was more upset about the angry voices. She did thank Justinius for getting them out of Neraka, but she ended up leaving with the rest of the party, who left his new chambers to stay in the Tower's visitors' quarters, where a second Serious Talk ended up happening. Runa called out the party for their treatment of Justinius, though Evrouin and Gavin were both still rightly angry about things. The argument that followed eventually did cool down a bit, with the party still agreeing to travel together, though their trust in the wizard was pretty majorly broken. Gavin had a sort of private recollection of similar arguments between his childhood longtime friends Huma and Magius, which ended with him recalling the wisdom of "trust the man, not the actions."

Justinius, meanwhile, met with the Wizard Conclave, concerning the recent revelation that Raistlin Majere had changed orders, going from a Red Robe to a Black Robe. This was something that just happens sometimes-- it wasn't unheard of for wizards to change orders/robes-- but it came out that the heads of the White and Red Robe Orders had not been aware of Raistlin's change, which the head of the Black Robes had not told them. Furthermore, Raistlin's apparent allegiance with the Followers of Takhisis was concerning. Justinius then revealed the commonality that he and Raistlin had, that being the patronage of Fistandantilus. He told the Conclave of his being approached by Fistandantilus during his Aspirant's Test (which he'd rejected), then again after finding his spellbook in a tomb (rejected him again), and then once more in his Test of High Sorcery, where he'd accepted his offer, feeling like he'd run out of options.

I should point out that the Fistandantilus thing was something that the rest of the party is not aware of. Justinius was telling the Conclave, but he hadn't yet told the specifics to the party.

Lore drops followed as the Conclave confirmed that Fistandantilus had done such things in the past-- he was one of the first wizards, already an old man by the conclusion of the First Dragon War, but when the gods denied his request for an extended life, he'd turned to Takhisis and become a Black Robe, and had been seeking to build his power up ever since. Fistandantilus had manipulated the Kingpriest of Istar, leading to the Cataclysm, and had been hoping to get enough power to open a portal to the Abyss so he could overthrow and supplant Takhisis. Fistandantilus wants nothing less than to become not just a god, but the only god. The wizards thought that Fistandantilus had finally been destroyed at Zaman after the Cataclysm had ended, but clearly he still clung to life somehow. More information about him could only be retrieved from Astinus of Palanthas, the immortal scribe of the Great Library.

Before that, however, we had to return to Sancrist, because Evrouin had just received word that his father was gravely ill. We hitched a lift back home with Justinius's former mentor, Amanrath Pah, who had adventured with Evrouin's father. Evro got to spend some time with his dad before he passed, getting some advice on leadership and assurances that it was okay if you didn't know what to do, but to never let that show. Lord Willem also advised Evro not to keep comparing himself to his late older brother, that he'd grown into an upstanding man and noble knight in his own right. He also said that the Knighthood of Solamnia needed to be united if they were going to be able to fight against the might of the Dragon Armies, and urged Evro to join the Order of the Rose, the highest order in the knighthood, so that he could support Lord Gunther Uth Wistan, the leader of the knighthood.

Lord Willem passed away that night, and our knight became Lord Evrouin Brightblade. After the funeral and wake, he had his own conclave, as the knight leadership heard his petition, asking how he'd upheld their tenets of Justice (exposed and punished treachery in Thorbardin for the Dwarves), Truth (revealed the existence of the Followers of Takhisis), and Mercy (sparing his cousin Sturm despite falsely posing as a knight, because Sturm's heart was still true and noble and he could be redeemed).

There was no objection from Lord Gunther's chief political rival, Lord Derek Crownguard, which we know is just down to scheming. Lord Derek was stinging after the loss of his seat of power in Vingaard, which had fallen to the Blue Dragon Army. But Derek had returned from his own journeys with a lesser dragonlance, further highlighting the next phase of our quest is to find the dragonmetal we need to start forging dragonlances again to combat the Dragon Armies.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Dragonlance--

This week's session was an old-fashioned dungeon crawl through the sewers of Neraka, the eeeeevil capital of eeeeevil. The goal was to rescue the dragon eggs of the good dragons (metallic dragons) from the clutches of the forces of evil, not just because the evil folks had been conducting rituals to corrupt the eggs and hatch them into evil draconian servants of Takhisis (Tiamat), the goddess of evil, but rescuing the eggs and getting them to safety would allow the metallic dragons to finally get involved in the conflict openly, now the eggs weren't being held hostage.

After much sneaking around and a couple of combats, we managed to find our way to the basement of the Temple of Takhisis, and to the actual chamber where the eggs were being kept. The forces of evil had already used about half the eggs in their rituals (200 feet of shelves, only 100 feet of which were still occupied with eggs), and we could hear them in the next chamber preparing another ritual. Fortunately, we'd planned for this, and our wizard Justinius cast Invisibility on everyone so we could sneak past and get to a point where he could prep a Teleportation Circle for us. The rest of us then gathered as many eggs into the circle as we could, managing about 116 out of 200 eggs before we could tell the clerics and wizards in the next room were starting to become aware that something was up. Not wanting to risk a fight against dozens of powerful casters, we decided to bail with the ones we had.

Justinius asked Gavin (my character) if he wanted him to assure the remaining eggs wouldn't be corrupted, and that's when our wizard's player revealed what we ended up dubbing Jesse's Pocket Nuke.

See, some time before, Justinius had learned the basics of blood magic from an NPC wizard (and major named character from the Dragonlance novels) called Raistlin. Justinius had been using blood magic every night since then to empower and inscribe Glyphs of Warding onto a page in a spellbook in his possession, but one which had belonged to Fistandantilus, his pseudo-patron. A Glyph of Warding inscribed with an explosive rune (as he had done) would deal 5d8 force damage once triggered. And since spellbooks effectively have infinite pages, he'd inscribed 348 glyphs into the book, primed to trigger when opened. That's 1740d8 force damage. It would deal huge amounts of damage to the Temple and the forces of evil (though the DM noted some characters had plot armor and would survive) as well as destroy the remaining eggs.

The characters were aghast at his prep work. The players were aghast at his prep work. We'd known that Justinius had been doing something with blood magic every night, but he'd kept the details hidden from us. Justinius wouldn't set off the wards without Gavin's okay, since the eggs belonged to "his people" (he had, after all, lived among the metallic dragons for 1200+ years and married one and had children with her). I was torn about it, mostly because Gavin wouldn't want to destroy them, but didn't want to see them corrupted either. Mike, one of the other players, did quip, "I think this is an acceptable 'Baby Hitler' scenario," which broke the table for a minute or so, before I went into character as Gavin and muttered, "Gods forgive me. Do it."

So we teleported out of Neraka with the eggs we'd rescued, tossing Jesse's Pocket Nuke out as we left. We arrived at the Wayreth Tower of High Sorcery, where we contacted the Metallic Dragon High Council (which includes Gavin's wife Gwyneth) to retrieve the eggs. Gwyneth looked at the eggs and asked, "Is this all of them?" clearly horrified that their numbers were so reduced, as Gavin replied, utterly truthfully, "This is all that's left." The High Council teleported themselves and the eggs back to safety, while Gavin just dropped to his knees, hands clasped and head bowed, praying for forgiveness, and the session ended while our heads were spinning about Jesse's Pocket Nuke.

[Jay 2K Winger]

D&D AL: Rime of the Frostmaiden--

This was supposed to be our final session, but circumstances meant we didn't get into the final dungeon crawl. That said, David the DM did 3D print a gift for everyone, a model of a taxidermied fish called Ol' Bitey, which was a feature in the tavern our characters originally met in at the start of the campaign. (Ol' Bitey is enchanted to start singing if someone gets close enough, Billy the Big-Mouth Bass style.) Unexpected, but we all thought it was funny.

At any rate, most of the session was us traversing through the ruins of an ancient city, trying to gather the necessarily steps/components to perform a ritual so we can enter the main tower in the middle. The city had been built by wizards, and the ritual involved demonstrating mastery of each of the eight schools of magic. There were eight smaller towers around the city, each dedicated to one of the schools, each with its own hazards or obstacles or challenges to overcome so we could get the info or macguffin we needed.

Early in our exploration, we accidentally triggered a sort of dodge-ball style game that we had to play through. Because our characters didn't know the rules of the game, we were making all of our checks at disadvantage (roll 2d20 and take the lower number), which really sucked for me because out of the six or seven rolls that I did during it, I rolled four Nat-20s which I couldn't take advantage of. Brian (who plays the idiotic Boron) had it worse, however, as he rolled no less than five Nat-1s in a row.

The continuing gag of Boron believing he's uncovered the "truth" about my character Rhoric's actual class continued (this week Boron "realized" that Rhoric is an Eldritch Knight Fighter), but finally during the session, Boron came to the uncomfortable realization that he was not, in fact, exiled from his homeland for failing the honor duel with his brother, and it was all a huge misunderstanding. But, rather than accept the fact that he could go home, he declared it would be "too embarrassing" and would stay in the Icewind Dale, "with you," this last bit said while looking directly at me.

One of the towers was dedicated to Divination Magic, and there was a huge fish-bowl like crystal ball in it, containing dozens (hundreds) of eyes. I had Rhoric ask it for details on where the tower's ritual components were (as the tower was damaged), and was given the information-- and then after failing a CON save, Rhoric lost one of his eyes, which went into the fish-bowl. So now Rhoric's missing an eye. (David the DM had Boron do an Insight Check, and when he rolled poorly enough, had him "realize" that Rhoric was a sailor.)

Toward the end of the session, David realized we wouldn't have enough time to finish getting the bits of the ritual and do the dungeon crawl through the tower, but we all agreed that we could do our actual final session another time.

(Also I may or may not have just bought an eye-patch to wear to the next session, just for the lulz.)

[Ceir]

Picked up a copy of Star Trek: Captain's Chair since my last post. It's a VP-acquiring deckbuilder with some neat mechanics, the gameplay is pretty standard daisy-chaining engine mechanics to claim cards and gain VPs, and there are a couple of options for solitaire mode. The base set has six characters: Picard, Shran, Koloth, Sisko, Sela, and Burnham; and I've done at least basic run-throughs with the first three in Stupid Bot solitaire mode, plus trying a two-handed game of Picard vs. Shran that came out closer than I expected. (Stupid Bot basically turns it into a solitaire puzzle for 'score as high as possible', as opposed to the actual automata that plays cards and actively opposes you.)

It's dense and crunchy for its size, lots of keywords and icons and if/then/when mechanics; and it's a Wizkids game so everything's maybe just a little too overengineered and fiddly. I'm not normally big on deckbuilders like this, but for me it's the Star Trek factor - I wouldn't have gone for the original game it's based on, something called 'Imperium'. But I do appreciate the variety in what you get, they're not afraid to pull deep cuts for cards, and the expansions look like some more fun characters - more TOS, Lower Decks, Disco, and Enterprise rep.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Some news from the Adventurers' League chapter I'm a part of-- Brian, the player of Boron from our Frostmaiden campaign, has joined the ranks of the DMs in our chapter, and will be running tables soon in the future. The other DMs ran through a one-shot with him on Sunday and collectively agreed that he did a great job. So that'll be interesting.

Dragonlance--

Another no-combat session, as our pack of Misfits trekked from the chateau where we'd been staying up into the Rose Mountains to find the Monks of the Rose. There was some exposition from the DM explaining that the Monks were not named for the mountains. The mountains took their name for the distinctive rose quartz found there, which was highly prized around the world for its quality. (I did joke, "You can only call it rose quartz if it comes from the Rose Mountain region, otherwise you have to call it sparkling quartz.") The Monks take their name from Majere, the Serene Rose, the god of discipline. (The Knights of the Rose, one of the orders of the Knights of Solamnia, take their name from one of the symbols of Paladine, the god of redemption.)

Along the way, we noticed we were being watched from above, but made no signs of violent intent, since we correctly assumed the monks were monitoring us. We later got a message from them in the form of a parchment attached to a dart which was fired into Sir Evrouin's shield. (We jokingly referenced Monty Python & the Holy Grail at this point. "Message for you, sir!") The monks asked us to remove our arms and armor in the next clearing before continuing, which we did, reluctantly in our barbarian's case. But we were guided to the monastery and eventually met with its Grand Master, Herakles, who asked what brought us here.

We explained our intent to enter Neraka, on a rescue mission. Gavin did most of the talking, and it came out that we were rescuing dragon eggs, and his own extended lifespan, and all the rest of it, which boggled Herakles's mind. Justinius at this point realized that we were under the effects of something like a Zone of Truth spell. Since Gavin hadn't been attempting to lie, I hadn't needed to make any sort of saving throw, and since Herakles knew the effect was in place, it was startling him with these revelations. We essentially asked for whatever help the monks could give in helping us get into the evil city of Neraka.

Herakles said there might be some things they could do, and welcomed us to stay with the monastery for at least the night. We were able to go to our own rooms in the monastery to freshen up and reclaim our equipment, at which point there were some discussions among the party.

Runa the Barbarian went to talk with Sir Evrouin about how to be a leader. She had had a tense conversation with the ancestral spirits of her mother and grandmother, who were pressuring her to be the chieftain of her tribe, a role she didn't think she was suited for. Her mother had remarked that she hadn't thought she was ready either. Needing advice, she went to Evro, who admitted that for all that he was seen as the leader of our party, he had doubts about his own leadership as well, and doubts about whether people they met with respected him, or they respected his role as a knight. It wasn't the same thing, to Evro. He ultimately advised Runa to think about the common goal of her tribe, to listen to what they want, and then she should be able to lead them to that goal, adding, "If you think you're ready to be a leader, then you're probably not ready."

Justinius, our wizard, spoke with my character Gavin, since he knew one of the more famous historical wizards, Magius, who'd been something of a personal hero to Justinius. Magius, through his life, had gone from being a White Robed wizard to a Red Robe, to a Black Robe, to a renegade wizard, before finally coming back to the White Robes, and Justinius had wanted to know about it. Similar to our wizard, Magius had gone from white to red during his Test of High Sorcery, though Gavin did not know the context for why. (He does know the context for Magius going to the Black Robes, but didn't share it with Justinius; Magius's mother had died of plague, and the distraught Magius sought to bring her back, and necromancy is usually the bailiwick of Black Robes.)

Justinius admitted to his own self-confidence and heartfelt belief that he was destined to become "a great man," as Magius had been, acknowledging the arrogance of such a belief. He admitted to his near-failure in his admittance exam, and that he'd received an offer from "a powerful figure" which he'd turned down. Gavin remarked that perhaps the long delay before his exam passed him was "a sign from a higher power" to try to temper his arrogance. He asked about why Justinius had gone from White to Red. Our wizard explained that he had tried very hard to protect his friends and allies using his magic, but had failed three Knights of Solamnia in battle. He still carried their rings as remembrance. And not long after that, the Misfits had joined him in his Test of High Sorcery, but had been captured by a renegade wizard. After nearly exhausting his magic trying to protect and save them, Justinius had decided to wield more offensive magic and killed the renegade wizard to save his friends. Justinius said he'd do it again.

Now, during Justinius' tale, and after his almost-mention of Fistandantilus (the "powerful figure"), Gavin did get a flash of a vision of Justinius in Black Robes, and of five bloody finger-marks in his chest-- a sign of Justinius' acceptance of Fistandantilus's offer (from his Test of High Sorcery). He didn't call attention to this, letting our wizard finish his tale, because I wanted to see whether Jesse (Justinius's player) would bring it up or not. When he didn't, because Gavin wants to try to help guide him to either admitting to his own choices or to follow a better path, Gavin instead commented that perhaps the lesson he should take from his Test is this-- That looking for a magical solution first and always may not always be the best option. Like my previous character Cogburn, Gavin remarked on Justinius' obviously great intellect, and tried to steer him to considering options that don't always rely on magic, something which it was clear Justinius didn't quite understand. He did tell Justinius that he would always be there to listen and offer advice. Justinius said he would take him up on that offer, and at this point, Gavin tapped him on the chest-- exactly where he'd seen the vision of Fistandantilus's touch-- and said, "You do that." Just my way of having Gavin subtly tell Justinius that he knows something.

After joining the monks for dinner, we met with Herakles again in the monks' library. Their order was dedicated to preserving and sharing knowledge, so they had an extensive one. The talk turned to Neraka, and how unnatural it felt. Besides the pervasive sense of evil around the place, it had seemingly sprung up from nowhere about 130 years prior, and had been steadily growing about once a generation since. The monks had been watching this happen, but had not had much luck entering the city without detection. But they had taken sketches of the city as it grew and Herakles showed this off for us.

At which point, Gavin's knowledge of the past came into play once again. The first sketch of Neraka had shown the ruins of a temple, one which Gavin had seen in his time: the Grand Temple of Paladine at the heart of the city of Istar. The only thing is, Istar had been destroyed more than 200 years prior in the Cataclysm, when its Kingpriest had stood on the steps of the Grand Temple and demanded of the gods the power to destroy all the evil in the world, and the gods had smote the city for it. The Temple had been at ground zero in the Cataclysm, and Herakles said it couldn't be that temple. Gavin insisted he knew the Temple when he saw it, but had no explanation for how it had been transported and partially restored. The subsequent sketches showed the Temple restoring, but noticeably altered, then becoming a fortress, then sprouting five towers shaped like chromatic dragon heads. The party knew what we were looking at-- the Temple of Takhisis, which the great red wyrm Ember had claimed was almost complete.

We mentioned the need to find "the Everman, the Green Gemstone Man" before the forces of evil could, at which point Herakles stopped us. In our earlier meeting with him, we'd mentioned the Green Gemstone Man, but now our mentioning "the Everman" connected the two terms, which he'd never heard in conjunction previously. The Everman was something that the monks had heard about, initially from a tale overheard in a tavern, about a hunter and his sister who came across a ruin in a forest. He had taken a gemstone from the ruins, despite the protestations of his sister, and in his greed and rage, he'd killed her. As punishment, the gods had cursed him to live forever, becoming the Everman. We postulated that perhaps the gemstone the Everman had taken had been from some of the ruins of the Grand Temple of Paladine, and that the Nerakians needed it to finish their Temple.

Herakles put at our disposal one of their monks who was an expert in armor, who could research ways to help muffle the clanking of heavy armor (such as what Evrouin and Gavin wore) to help us with a stealthier approach, and give us charts of the surrounding area of Neraka and where patrols were likely to be. So we spent three days at the monastery, during which we were taught how to muffle our armor, Runa trained with the monks and gained the Unarmed Fighting feat to allow her to deal more damage with her unarmed strikes, and Justinius spent time sending messages to our allies to keep an eye out for the Green Gemstone Man, and then scrying on Raistlin, his would-be mentor, who turned out to now be in Neraka, and also wearing Black Robes. Raistlin had clearly joined forces with the Abasinian Empire.

His scrying also spotted an entrance into Neraka via the sewer outlets, so it looks like the party will once again be traipsing through the sewers of a city...

[Ceir]

Well, poot. Un-fun shenanigans, found out one of the FLGSes I frequent is closing next month. Nothing awful happened, owner dude is just retiring - well-deserved, given that running a hobby shop of any stripe (game, comic, whatever) is a tenuous business at best in the age of "it's cheaper on the internet", and then (to make the joke) In This Economy...preemptive RIP, you guys were great for weird stuff.

[Nunavut Pants]

Interesting about the vamps. In AD&D and 2e and possibly a few versions after that, vamps simply drained your levels. You would have gone from level 11 to level 10, losing one level's worth of HP and that level's abilities. Come to think of it, vamps may have been one of the critters that drained you TWO levels at one hit! Very very very nasty monsters! And that doesn't even count them assuming gaseous form at will, polymorphing to bats, and being immune to non-magic weapons...

[Jay 2K Winger]

D&D AL--

Got a chance to jump into a Tier 3 (Levels 11-16) game at Adventurers' League this week. So often the higher tier games are the same weeks as the Frostmaiden campaign I've been taking part in, so I haven't really had a chance to do a lot with it. Thankfully, I was able to this week, and I finally brought Seb, my half-orc barbarian, up to Tier 3 by bumping him up to Level 11. Only real new feature I got with Level 11 is Relentless Rage, which basically would have let me keep going if I dropped to 0 HP while in a Rage, which never came up.

But I got to get some disgusting damage in thanks to Seb's build and his Greatsword of Wounding. To refresh, a greatsword by default does 2d6+STR damage. The Wounding property means it deals an extra 2d6 necrotic damage. Seb has a Belt of Hill Giant Strength, which means I get a +5 in STR. Greatswords are also heavy weapons, so my Great Weapon Mastery means I get to add my Proficiency Bonus (+4) to my damage rolls with heavy weapons. My Rage also gives me +3 to any STR based damage. By using my Brutal Strike while using my Reckless Attack, I deal an extra 1d10 damage if I hit.

4d6+1d10+12 = an average of 29 damage, 6 of which is necrotic.

We started the session in combat-- this was a carry-over from the previous part of this adventure-- and I got a Nat-20 on my Initiative roll, but had to spend the first two rounds just getting from where we arrived in the dungeon to where the combat was happening. The continuing adventurers were in combat with a pack of vampires. Seb finally gets in range of one of the vampires, and so I go for my Reckless Brutal Strike -- Nat-20! I double all the dice I'm rolling. (8d6+2d10+12) I took that vampire from full health to almost dead in one strike, and the follow-up attack, while not a crit, was still disgusting, and left that vampire hanging on by a thread.

It wasn't until combat continued that I realized I'd forgotten a feature of my Greatsword of Wounding, but typically you can't retroactively apply something you forgot like that, so I just left it until I got my next turn. Unfortunately, all the vamps soon after went down before Seb got another turn, but there were plenty more in other parts of the dungeon. One of the things that makes vampires a nasty enemy is their bite. Not only do they automatically get to hit with it if they have you grappled, but if you fail a CON save, not only does the bite apply necrotic damage, but it lowers your max HP. This is an effect that can only be cured by taking a long rest or using a high level spell called Greater Restoration.

When we moved on in the dungeon, we entered a room which had more vamps in it, but also this machine which we'd figured out was causing this enervation effect in the dungeon, causing anyone who spent enough time in the dungeon to lose vitality (lowering their max HP), and simply entering the room where this machine was caused PCs to lose 5 off their max HP. We decided we needed to destroy the machine, so our monk gets into the room and starts whaling on it. When he finally disabled the machine, it caused the crystal powering it to essentially go haywire, and now it was sapping 10 off everyone's max HP every round. Along with the six vamps in the room, that was a nasty threat. Even just looking through the door, as the party's cleric and wizard did, was enough to get hit with the enervation effect. As I remarked about it, "We're basically fighting in the basement of Chernobyl."

Still, I was able to get in and keep doing some nasty damage of my own with Seb's Greatsword of Wounding, and along with that, used the feature I'd forgotten in the previous combat. After hitting a vamp, I told the DM to have it make a CON save, which it passed on the first hit, but it failed on the second. That's when I explained what the sword does-- if the victim fails the CON save, they are unable to regain HP for the next hour, or until the effect is broken. The victim can attempt the save at the end of each of their turns, ending the effect on a success.

When I finished reading it off, the DM went, "Ooh! Ewww! That is nasty! Ewww!" I had correctly deduced that the vampires were regaining HP with each bite attack, but thanks to my sword, this particular vamp was now unable to do it.

Still, thanks to some successful bites from vamps and failed CON saves from me, along with the haywire crystal's enervation effect, I went from 108 max HP to 44 max HP by the end of that combat, when the crystal was finally shattered to stop its effects. When I commented on how bad Seb was doing-- he'd only avoided getting his actual HP (not the max) damaged thanks to the cleric's regular buff that gave everyone temp HP each round-- the rest of the table was shocked and very quickly agreed to let Seb take the Greater Restoration to get him back to full max HP, because otherwise he was in very serious danger in the rest of the dungeon.

[Nunavut Pants]

I finally got to the reconstituted Monday night boardgame group!

There were five of us, most of whom I hadn't seen in months. It was good to catch up, particularly with N who has a new medical regime that has resulted in her actually not needing a cane any more! Woo hoo!

We played "Things in Rings", which has been described as "is a hot dog a sandwich, the board game." You set out three rings in an overlapping Venn diagram, and one person gets three cards, one for each ring. One ring is for "word", and its card lists a specific criterion, such as "has at least five letters" or "has duplicate letters somewhere in it". One ring is for "Attribute", and its card lists some sort of attribute that an object can have. Examples from today were "floats in water", and "you can look through it". The third ring is for "Context", and its card lists a way that objects can be used. A couple of examples were "you can buy it in a store", "makes noise when used", and "single use".

Each other player is dealt five cards that have nouns on them. The original person gets as many cards as there are other players, and places them in the Venn diagram according to which of the three criteria they meet. (There's a "none" area outside all three rings.) Then the other players try to place their cards, one at a time, into the correct area of the diagram. If they place a card correctly, they try again. If they are incorrect, the first person moves the card to the correct spot and the guesser takes a card. Theoretically the object is to run out of cards, but we were trying to let everyone go out and then guess the criteria cards.

It's an interesting game, but pretty thinky for me.

We only got the one game in.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Dragonlance--

Jesse had car trouble (he lost his car keys and was stuck at home, and there wasn't enough time to arrange for transpo for him) so he was joining us on speakerphone for the session.

In the aftermath of dealing with Cyan Bloodbane, we had to work out our next course of action. King Lorac had asked us to find his daughter, but all we knew was she had left to "find help," and could be literally anywhere. Given that forging new dragonlances would take months of work and we didn't yet have the appropriate wizard and cleric to bless/empower them, much less dragons to ride to wield them properly, we decided our next step should be liberating the Metallic Dragon eggs from the Abasinian Empire, as dangerous as that might be.

As we rode into the region of Estwild, however, my character Gavin recognized the mountain pass we were traveling through and noted that-- while it might be called Estwild now-- this was the road into his homeland, Erol. The same region that had produced the historical legends of Huma Dragonbane and Magius. Gavin had been childhood friends with both. He had some melancholy as he looked over his once-homeland, now pretty unrecognizable after 1200+ years and a cataclysm. Especially when they found a few remnants of the village of Erol in a forest.

Then they came along where the village and castle of Baxtry should have been, but where the castle once stood was this beautifully-built chateau, with a sign out front reading "Baxtry Arms - The Last Homely House in Estwild." It turned out this was a traveler's inn, and had been built by a master mason (former head of the mason's guild, no less) from Palanthas. The mason explained he'd had a vision in a dream of "a star the size of a mountain" falling to earth, and was told to "raise a home where the star fell." He came out here and built the chateau, but there isn't a huge amount of travelers.

But, while we were enjoying some sherry (out of game, too; DM Bob brought some very sweet sherry for us all to try), Angus MacKenzie showed up-- the avatar of the god of crafting, Reorx. Angus contrived to have the innkeeper leave to prepare dinner, and then spoke with us all alone, but specifically to Runa the Barbarian, able to tell that something was amiss with her. We explained she'd been experiencing recurring nightmares, and that they were connected to the dragon teeth that had been put into her scimitars' hilts. Angus did some sort of ritual over them, and then basically spoke with the ancient red wyrm dragon Emberekanashli.

What followed was some lore-dumping, after a heated exchange between god and ancient dragon, as Angus first purged the taint from Runa's swords, before explaining that long, long ago, when the world was first created, the gods learned the stars in the firmament were actually souls, and the first five that were drawn to the world of Krynn were the First Dragons, who became beloved of the gods. But Takhisis (the goddess of evil) corrupted them and the First Dragons turned away from the gods, who mournfully tried to fill the void from their absence by shepherding the mortal races that followed. (Elves, gnomes, humans.) In the First Dragon War, the First Dragons were sealed away in the Dragon Orbs, but now they've been freed-- something that would have taken some manner of divine intervention. Ember and Cyan Bloodbane were two of these First Dragons, explaining why they were so powerful.

Angus, hearing that we were intending to go into the imperial capital of Neraka, advised us to visit the Monks of the Rose, whose monastery was in the mountains nearby. They might know ways into the city that would reduce our chances of a deadly fight.

Before retiring for the night, the innkeeper did warn the party that some guests had reported strange happenings in the night, things being moved, etc. So we weren't too surprised when a ghost manifested during the night. And once again, Gavin came in useful here, as he recognized the ghost as Lord Oswal Baxtry, the last lord of the former castle, who had died during Gavin's time, poisoned by a traitor. Oswal was surprised to see Gavin alive, but after speaking with him, we learned that Oswal's unfinished business was simply that he wanted to be remembered; he had died with no heirs or family, no legacy to be carried on. He was gratified to hear that the chateau had been named for him (Baxtry Arms) and then we summoned and spoke with the innkeeper, who was frightened of the ghost, but Gavin again explained the situation. The innkeeper saw the potential for historical significance to putting Lord Oswal's tale to paper, and arranged for paper and pen to be provided to the ghost. The innkeeper would likely use the tale for marketing purposes, and we also saw a possible way for Justinius the Wizard to get his "in" to the Library of Palanthas, if he could be the one to deliver the finished book to the library.

Mind you, DM Bob has semi-jokingly told the rest of the table (Jesse is only half-aware this is not a joke) that Justinius will basically never get to return to Palanthas, and he'll contrive to have him get plane-shifted when/if the party ever makes it back.

[Nunavut Pants]

Another on-line game of Terraforming Mars lost. I was leading partway through the last turn, but one player did the kind of annoying "sell one card and end turn" thing over and over so she could take all of her actions uninterrupted at the end. And she had a 32-point final generation, out of a 92-point score. The other player and I tied for VP, but I won the tiebreaker. So I could proclaim "NOT LAST!"

Board game afternoon today at a friend's house. We played a three-player game of Azul. The one person who had never played before won. I led early on, but wound up coming in last.

We played a round of "So Clover" while the other table finished whatever it was they were playing. Then we consolidated to a single table so we could all play "Ransom Notes". Which is basically refrigerator poetry the game. There's a prompt on a card that gets drawn from the deck, and everyone has a bunch of words on magnets. Each person tries to follow the prompt as well as possible, and theoretically you collectively choose the best fit, but we all just shared ours and laughed a lot. One of the prompts was "Write the text for a missing cat poster". Which is tough if your bunch of words doesn't contain "animal", "cat", "missing", "return"... Of course, the prompt that I drew was "walk us through the act of masturbation". Which led to some .... interesting word sets.

[Ceir]

Anyway, when David mentioned still wanting to run a RED game, I commented on still being interested. Peter and Mark, two other players, also expressed interest. Brian looked vaguely interested, and seemed to get a little more clear on it when we described it as "Shadowrun but without elves." Brian had played Shadowrun once and had not enjoyed the system much, though he enjoyed playing with the table he was at so he just put up with it. David told us he'll message us on Discord if he gets around to committing to running a RED game.

As opposed to "cyberpunk with elves", which is how I had to explain Shadowrun back in the day. I've been eyeing the RED Combat Zone skirmish game, 'cause it has some neat mechanics and pretty spiff looking models, but I just do not have room on my hobby table for another miniatures game right now.

We've been playing Flash Point fairly frequently at my FLGS board game nights, and I finally picked up a copy of the base game myself. I love co-ops, it's great for solitaire, and for as simple as the mechanics are it delivers a pretty thematic game - probably the most important thing for something in my solo collection. There's a few spots where the rules are a little muddy, and in reading up and watching some videos I realized just how many house rules we'd been working with in the FLGS group, but it didn't knock the game too askew.

Last solo I played, I set up the easy 'house' map, medium difficulty number of hazards, 4 firefighter team. Since it's co-op regardless of number of players, there's one way to win (save 7 victims) and multiple ways to lose (4 victims die, running out of damage markers means the building collapses, the outside chance of the entire firefighting crew dying...).

I got lucky with the initial rolls to place points of interest, they all wound up in one corner of the house - and they all turned out to be people. I was able to get in, breach a wall, and haul three victims out in the span of about six activations. Of course, while I was doing that, half of the building became - as they say - 'fully involved', with a couple of hazmat explosions blowing out doors and cracking walls. And then I had to go into that mess to get the other points of interest that may or may not have been people. Took a couple of fatalities, and one firefighter got KO'ed for a turn by an explosion, but I saved enough victims to win the run.

Definitely eyeing a couple of the map expansions, I'm not too fussed about the miniatures. House rulings aside, last game I played with the FLGS group was on the High Rise map in hard mode and good lord we lost that quickly. Chain reactions, busted elevators, flare-ups that took out a whole cubicle farm...it was messy.

One neat thing that I swear I've seen before but can no longer find is photos online of someone's giant-size game at a convention - all built out of Lego. It was scaled to Lego fire trucks and ambulances at the old 4-stud-wide City size, the map was built so the walls and doors were breakable, and they'd custom-painted the minifigures. Super neat.

[Jay 2K Winger]

D&D AL: Rime of the Frostmaiden--

The running gag of "Boron doesn't know what class Rhoric is" took a couple of new twists this week. After last time, Boron thinks Rhoric (a sorcerer) is actually a wizard, but due to circumstances during the session this week, he now thinks that Rhoric is "on the run" for "wizard reasons" and hence his insistence that he's a sorcerer is to cover up what he really is-- and so now he's "playing along" to help cover for him. When an NPC remarked on this to Rhoric, I just shrugged and said, "I'm accepting the fact that he's right, even if it's for the wrong reasons."

And then, a new wrinkle came up during the main combat encounter of the session. The party had gotten split up while exploring a cave. Our monks had gone down a tunnel to investigate what appeared to be a hot spring, and been attacked by a monster called a remorhaz (basically a worm-thing ambush predator), while the rest of the part on the origin point of the tunnel got attacked by a vampire gnoll and a pack of vampire kobolds. Our cleric cast Daylight in the area, impacting all of the vampires, and I had burnt down a bunch of the gnoll's HP with spells beforehand.

Then Boron hit the gnoll with an arrow strike before spewing a bunch of insults at it. When the gnoll's turn came up, it took enough damage from the Daylight spell to die, leaving Boron to think he'd done that somehow. He repeated it on the kobolds (who lost a bunch of health from my Fireball) by using a Conjure Barrage technique and then some insults... kobolds' turn comes up, cooked by the Daylight. Leaving Boron to think that he'd somehow done it himself.

Before the session, the DM had asked Brian (Boron's player) for the actual specifics on Boron's backstory, where it came out that Boron's brother (who had "beaten him in an honor duel" to become king of their homeland) was a wizard. So when this moment came up where Boron thought he'd somehow used magic, I quipped, "Are you sure your brother is the wizard?" Brian played it for what it's worth, first with an existential crisis, before Boron decided he must be a sorcerer (since wizards develop magic through study and practice, while sorcerers are just born with it) started trying to "embrace his newfound sorcerous power" in various situations.

I noted to the DM, "You were kind of running out of classes for Boron to mistake Rhoric for, so this new wrinkle might just be the way to sustain the joke."


Somewhat related, during a break in the session, the conversation turned briefly to Cyberpunk RED, a more recent variant on the classic Cyberpunk TTRPG (the inspiration for the Cyberpunk 2077 video game). It had started with talking about 2077, and specifically the character Adam Smasher, and Brian was the only one at the table not familiar with it. We sort of caught him up as best we could, both about the game world and Smasher (a cyborg psychopath who is 99.9% machine and is really pissed off that there's still that 0.01% human left), when DM David mentioned he still wants to run a RED game sometime.

Three years ago, when I had just started getting into TTRPG's, responded to an LFG post on one game store's Discord, where David had been hoping to gather a group together to Session 0 for RED. To create characters and whatnot. I was sadly the only player to show up, and with a character no less. David and I spent some time chatting for a bit while I explained a little bit about the character I'd created, a mechanic called Wayo with a mild case of Tourette's-- mostly just a twitch and a stutter, but the latter would lead to his occasional outburst of coprolalia ("PISS!") more out of frustration than anything.

Anyway, when David mentioned still wanting to run a RED game, I commented on still being interested. Peter and Mark, two other players, also expressed interest. Brian looked vaguely interested, and seemed to get a little more clear on it when we described it as "Shadowrun but without elves." Brian had played Shadowrun once and had not enjoyed the system much, though he enjoyed playing with the table he was at so he just put up with it. David told us he'll message us on Discord if he gets around to committing to running a RED game.

[Nunavut Pants]

Went to another Game Day this past Saturday! Played "Fresco", a game about restoring an old painting. You're a master artist with five apprentices, and you have to choose what time to get up in the morning (earlier means you get more choices, but pay more for paints and your crew's morale drops) and choose where to dispatch your apprentices to. You can have them use paint to restore the fresco, or send them to the market to buy paints, or have them paint portraits to make extra money, or have them mix paints to make more colors, or send them to the theater to improve their morale.

Each space on the fresco requires some combination of paint colors to restore. You spend the paints, and collect the tile for the space. The tile gives you an income every turn, as well as victory points. The actions above have to be taken in order, so any paints you buy this turn are available for use this turn, but any paints you mix are available for use in the next turn, as mixing paints comes after restoring the fresco.

There were four of us playing, one of whom had played the game once. He won; I came in third. He basically got into the lead about a quarter of the way through the game, and just kept it for the rest of the game.

After that, we played quite a few rounds of "Just One". Lots of laughter, lots of fun was had. We were successful most rounds, guessing the words correctly.