Tabletop Fun

[Nunavut Pants]

Last week, one group organized a Bunco afternoon. Bunco being a very silly dice game, where you roll three dice and see how many of them match the number of the round you are in. There are six rounds per game. Each die that matches scores your team one point; if you roll three-of-a-kind you score five points; if you roll three-of-the-round-number you score 21 points and call out "BUNCO!" Between rounds you change tables and teams.

We played 3 games, 6 rounds in each, for 18 rounds. I lost 15 of the 18 rounds. Fortunately, there was a door prize for the "Biggest Loser", and I won that one by a mile!!

A couple of days later, there was another boardgame afternoon. I managed to get "Love Letter" on the table and four of us played a round or two. It's a fun kind of card game where you have a "hand" that is a single card, and on your turn you draw one card and play (or discard) either that one or the one in your hand. Cards have different effects, like you get to look at someone else's hand, or you compare hands and the person with the lower-value hand is knocked out of the round, and so on. The object is to either knock everyone else out of the round, or failing that to have the highest value hand at the end when the cards run out.

From there, the whole group (8 of us) moved on to a dice game called "Bupkis". You roll six dice, and 1s and 5s score, as do three-of-a-kinds and three pairs. If you have any dice that score, you can pick up the others and re-roll them. If your score for that round goes over a certain number, you can stop and add that round to your total score. If you ever roll dice and none of them score, you lose all the points from the round. I did pretty well, pulling out a big lead fairly early. I was able to score every round for most of the game, up until near the end. The gal sitting next to me, however, put on a lot of points at the end and just beat me.

I had to leave early at that point, so I don't know if there were any other games played.

[Jay 2K Winger]

I'm going to be trying my hand at DM'ing some D&D for my roommates again, with our Session 0 this Sunday. I gave them a few options of adventures to run, and after getting their votes in, we'll be doing Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, and they'll be running around the City of Waterdeep, dealing with various factions and nefarious sorts, and possibly getting their hands on at least part of a massive hoard of gold pieces.

EDIT: Session 0 went well. They mostly had their characters done, a few little corrections here and there. Just needed everyone to decide how their characters knew one another, how they met, etc. And give a little bit of a rundown about Waterdeep in a broad sense (warning Sam that being a murderhobo will land him in jail before execution) and what not.

This is our wonderful cast of idiots:

* Raei Moonlight, an eladrin druid fresh from the Feywild.
* Roberto, a human rogue with an interest in stabbing people and robbing them.
* Grymjack Dane, a "chaotic awful" dwarf paladin with a -1 INT modifier.
* Aurum Oro, a dragonborn cleric who is now questioning his life (domain) choices.

[Nunavut Pants]

I hosted Bunco today. I did better than last time, which pretty much meant I wound up about mid-field in results.

The dice were pretty "cold" overall for everyone, it seemed. Scores seemed generally pretty low, and the person with the most "Buncos" (all three dice match the current round number) was only 3 in 18 rounds of play!

It was still fun, and still a good excuse to socialize.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Descent into Avernus--

This was the conclusion of our Adventurers League Descent into Avernus campaign. It started with us fighting off a wave of gnolls and gnoll-like monsters, then a larger wave of gnolls and demons, until we found ourselves fighting Yeenoghu, the Demon Prince of Gnolls (a lesser god), and while he was messing us up, we held our own long enough for reinforcements to show up and end the battle. Then, as we approached the end of the session, we confronted Zariel, a fallen angel turned archdevil and ruler of Avernus, who started by having us kill another archdevil, before demanding we return her sword, a powerful magical artifact and weapon, to her. Instead, we managed to convince her to stand down, to spare the people of the city we'd come to Hell to save, by appealing to her previously angelic nature. (My character helped persuade her by saying, "The true mark of power is mercy, not merely destroying evil.") Our group persuasion check was high enough (the lowest anyone rolled was 17, with all the others being above 20) that we successfully redeemed her.

We were playing in a special reserved room in the game store we use, and there was something about that table. There were the most Nat-20s I've ever seen, from multiple players, DM included.

Some of the fun occurrences--

We had a player dropping in for the end of the campaign who had some insane bonuses on his attacks (thanks to both his character build and some items he had), so he was nearly always landing hits and dealing some crazy damage in doing so, upwards of 50 points of damage on his first attack.

Ranger: [does a crazy attack and damage]
DM: Okay. Your second attack?
Ranger: (rolls) Nat-20.
Me: (to the DM) I just saw your eye twitch!

And then, during what ended up being the final combat encounter of the campaign--

DM: So, Gargauth is going to drop a Fireball right in the middle of all of you.
Warlock: Counterspell.
DM: Okay, he Counterspells your Counterspell.
Me: I Counterspell HIS Counterspell.

The DM actually gave us a "well done" on that one, because in doing so, we'd basically killed this (weakened) powerful fiend in one round of combat, between the Ranger/Rogue/Cleric's crazy attacks and our Fighter/Barbarian's also crazy attacks, taking him down to single-digit HP, and then on Gargauth's first chance to attack, we just completely negated him.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Mysteries of Albia--

So we finally agreed on a name for our party of P.I.'s after more than twenty sessions. While we'd nicknamed the group the Eagle Scouts after our first couple of sessions, due to the work that got put in by a summoned eagle and owl familiar and raven-like incarnated-spirit, we'd never committed to it in-character. But after foiling the assassination attempt and taking out a terrorist cell in our previous sessions, we were being awarded with medals and needed to give an official name for our team. We discussed some options, noting how we cleaned up problems (almost leading to calling ourselves something like "Waste Management") and fixed problems ("Fixers"), and suggesting the more non-indicative "Nova," we finally combined two of them and officially named ourselves "Fixer Nova." (OOCly, the "Nova" part is because we're in Northern Virginia, which is sometimes called "NoVa," but locals usually use "NOVA" to refer to the local community college.)

We also got promoted within our detective agency, which led to our participating in a sort of arcanic ritual and being associated with one of several different elements, but as luck (i.e. the dice gods) would have it, all but one of us rolled for the same element (Fire), and we got similarly associated codenames. This led to a joke later when the team needed to "balance their mana" while touching a crystal ball (we all needed to roll within a certain range of each other on d20's), as the DM described it as a sort of "Captain Planet" kind of thing, but we all immediately leant into the joke: "Fire! And Fire! And Fire! And Fire! And Ether! By your powers combined, OH GOD I'M BURNINNNNGGG!!!"

Waterdeep: Dragon Heist--

And I also DM'ed my first proper session with my roommates! They took on a troll and were doing a good job fighting it by themselves before an NPC jumped in and almost killed it, but Aurum the Cleric was able to get the last blow in. Then they met Volo, who wanted to hire them to find a friend that had maybe been kidnapped, and ... well, all of my players were immediately suspicious and kept rolling Insight checks. Most of them rolled pretty low. I didn't let them just do it immediately, made them wait until a bit later in the conversation to try again, until finally one of them rolled well enough to determine that Volo was being honest, but maybe didn't have the promised payment on him right at this moment.

They found the Old Xoblob Shop, a curiosities store, and got distracted asking questions of him, wanting to buy the stuffed beholder in the window, trying to see if there were any magic items in the store, etc. I let them roll d100 to see what trinkets stood out to them, and Raei the Druid found a "velvet packet of pink dust," which she rolled an Arcana check on, and rolled very well, but then I told her, "It's a packet of pink dust. As in a packet of dust that is pink."

Eventually, they tracked the baddies to a warehouse, where they tried to barge through the door, but failed the STR check, so they picked the lock instead. Of course, since they'd made some noise, the kenku inside were alerted and had hidden, and... well, this fight was where the DM's Curse kicked in. The DM's Curse is basically that the DM tends to roll pretty well against the party, but if that DM later is a player, the rolls go worse. I rolled two Nat-20s in the fight, and downed Aurum in the process. Fortunately, Raei was able to get to him after I coached her into using her Misty Step to close the distance and move up to Cure Wounds. Roberto the Rogue also got distracted trying to loot some dead bodies and thus got targeted by some of the kenku, nearly going down himself.

After all the fighting and questioning a friendly NPC who had been held captive, the City Watch turned up and started asking questions. Roberto tried cracking wise, but some poor choice of words got him the hairy eyeball. In the conversation that followed, I kept rolling Insight checks from the Captain against Roberto's Deception checks, and not rolling well enough to see through it, though he was still suspicious of Roberto.

Captain: (narrows eyes)
Roberto: I dream of being a comedian, so I make jokes.
Captain: Hm. What's your name?
Roberto: Frank. Westcastle.
Captain: (writes that down) Hm. Comedians are usually funny.
Roberto: Humor is subjective.
Captain: Yes, well, don't quit your day job. Speaking of, what is it you do?
Roberto: Real estate agent.
Captain: Hm. Well, you'll want to register with the local guild. Also, if you plan to pursue that dream of yours, you'll want to enroll with the Jesters Guild.

And you bet that I was writing down my roommate's answers to all this stuff.

All in all, the session went well!

[Jay 2K Winger]

Presented without context from D&D AL last night--

Us: What alignment is your warlock?
Her: Sarcastic neutral.

[Nunavut Pants]

My wife is from New England--Sarcasm is her native language. Luckily I'm fairly fluent in it.

[Jay 2K Winger]

D&D AL - Waterdeep: Dragon Heist--

Yes, one of the Adventurers League DMs decided to run the Waterdeep: Dragon Heist campaign, so of course I signed on for it. I did warn her I'm running the same campaign at home. She was fine with it. She even had me sit next to a brand new player at the table, since he hadn't played D&D ever, so I was explaining some of the mechanics where appropriate.

In Old Xoblob Shop, the party ended up intimidating the shopkeeper into divulging information he had about the abduction of our client. But he still tried to shake us down for coin...

Shopkeeper: "I-I-I... could tell you more for, um, for, um, maybe f-five gold..?"
Me: "Hm? What was that? One gold?"
Shopkeeper: "I, uh, I-I--- t-three gold?"
Me: "One gold, five silver."

And then, after he spilled the beans, as we left, my cleric just presses his palms together and smiles, "Selune's blessings be upon you."
-=-=-=-=-=-
Mysteries of Albia--

Hoo, boy.

We got a huge lore dump at the start of the session, one which completely recontextualized and overturned a lot of what we thought we knew about the setting. Magic sort of went away like two thousand years ago in the "Great Withering," but we found out that nearly all the magic in the world had one of two origins-- the Fey or the Dragons, who had been at war for ages. About three thousand years ago, the two sides had signed a Contract (more like a treaty) and had largely withdrawn from the world after.

There was a "guarantor" for the Contract, which had been tied to the immortal part of someone's soul. As it was explained, the immortal part of the soul remains when one passes on, and can be reincarnated, often without its prior lives' memories. And the guarantor had been reincarnated into our rogue, Vash. And devils like Knives are the patrons of all contracts, and Knives was the protector of that guarantor. All of this came as a huge surprise to Eric, Vash/Knives' player, and both halves protested this couldn't be true, since Vash had rescued Knives from the Thunder Lord. But this was explained as not coincidence, and that it had been orchestrated by fate/destiny, via the Queen of the Hells, Queen Medb.

All of this was over-arcing lore, not completely related to our current case. Which was about the disappearance (presumed death) of a Liverpudlian author, who is like a fantasy version of Lewis Carrol, and who had collaborated with a Liverpudlian band which wore colorful animal costumes. (Fantasy Beatles) While running down some leads in London, we got some banking information on all five and took a look at their banking records, which had a lot of donations to various individuals and institutions in Liverpool (at least one of which was a front for a Fey activist group), but then...

Jesse decided to throw in a gag, "What's this-- multiple donations to someone named Ashley Madison?" The table broke down in laughter, and the DM insisted that wasn't canon. But that didn't stop everyone else ignoring him and riffing on the idea about who Ashley Madison was... Did she run a gentleman's club? Publish gentlemen's literature? Was it a brothel?

Camilla: "Are you saying they're prostitutes?"
Me: "No, no, they call themselves 'seamstresses.' (Hem, hem.)"
DM: "No! No! This is not true!"
Me: "No, she is a seamstress, she just makes the costumes for the band! Boom, there you go, we gave you an out--"
DM: "This is not canon!"

(It's totally canon, and we all know it, and knowing my fellow players, we'll find a way to sneak the joke in again.)

There was an additional joke that came up at the end of the session, as everyone was turning in for a long rest. Beckett (Jesse's character), a church-raised warrior who was clearly disturbed/troubled by revelations about the gods he worshipped (which came out during the lore dump) and about other revelations about the party (Knives being a devil, Vash some living macguffin about a heathen contract, and Caradoc turning out to be a seven-foot-tall satyr), turned to Charlie and asked him, "Charlie... You are human, right?"

The DM thought this was hilarious and gave him Inspiration for it. And laughed even harder knowing there was no way for Jesse to use that Inspiration, since we were literally about to take a long rest, after which Inspiration goes away.
-=-=-=-=-=-
Home game - Waterdeep: Dragon Heist--

The party was crawling through the sewers into a Xanathar Guild hideout in search of Floon, a handsome if unlucky friend of Volo. In every room, Sean (the rogue) was asking what loot there was, as was Richard (the paladin), though Grymjack (Richard's character) was mostly interested if there were any warhammers. I had to tell them repeatedly, "I will let you know if there is anything to loot."

Richard was playfully getting frustrated at the lack of hammers-- Grymjack, prior to meeting up with the party, had fought some bandits and thrown his warhammer at one of them, sending the bandit and his hammer over the side of a cliff, making the hammer unretrievable. When Richard threw his hands up after another lack of hammers in the loot, I had to tell him, "You're the one who decided to throw your hammer off a cliff!" (I may relent and let him find one later.)

The "boss fight" room in the hideout saw me sketch it out on my battlemap, and then start setting out minis to represent the people in the room, and as I typically do, I reminded my friends, "These are placeholders, they aren't necessarily the same thing as what you're seeing." Which got them asking, "So these aren't real?" "Some of them might be." Which should have been a warning for them. But I chose one of the minis very specifically, as I described them seeing a mind flayer at the end of the room, which got Richard (D&D vet) and Nami (Baldur's Gate 3 player) to both get worried. So was I, since I knew a mind flayer was a threat that none of the Level 1 party was prepared for.

Fortunately, Richard had Grymjack call out to the mind flayer and get it to read his mind, to convince it that the NPC who was being tortured in the room wasn't the guy they were looking for. So the flayer peeked into his mind, recoiled from Grymjack's mild insanity, but saw he was telling the truth. So the flayer glared at the half-orc torturer, rolled its eyes, then called its pet intellect devourer back to itself, then glided out of the room. So the boss fight became a pretty basic 4-v-1 squash against a squishy half-orc wizard.

Brian, who plays our cleric, played up the cleric's frustrations with the party's antics-- in one of the earlier fights, Grymjack and a duergar kept swinging at one another and missing-- and described the cleric as just storming up and smashing a target in the head with his mace. And then gave a great one-liner--

"Part of my Life Domain is ending it."

[Nunavut Pants]

This past weekend was another session with the Small Valley folks.

We had a complete newb in the group, so we kept things lightweight. First, we played a couple of games of "King of Tokyo". The new player chose Cyber Kitty as her monster, and proceeded to wipe the floor with the rest of us. "That Cyber Kitty is one bad-ass bitch!" was the quote of the game. She actually won the first game by getting enough VPs (stars), and won the second one by taking out all of the other monsters.

Then the two people we knew were going to be late showed up. Someone suggested "Poetry for Neanderthals", and so we played that. One person was very enthusiastic about using the prop that comes with the game.

Oh, the prop? It's an inflatable plastic caveman club. You use it to bop the clue-giver when they do something wrong.

This is another word-guessing game; there is a clue-giver and a bunch of guessers on each team. The clue-giver has to only use words of one syllable in their clues; if they use polysyllabics or if they say the word then they get bopped and the card is worth -1. Each card has a word, and then a longer word or phrase that contains the first word. (E.g., one was "Stone" and "Stonehenge".) If the guessers get the short word, the card is worth one point, if they get the longer one it's worth three points. You can go after the short and then the long, or just go straight for the long one.

We played long-hair versus receding-hairline, and the long-hairs won. (It was initially boys-vs-girls, but the long-haired guy who stepped out to make a phone call came back in the middle of the game so we re-labeled the teams.)

Oh, and the person who was so eager to bop someone with the club only had one opportunity to do so--and she forgot!!

[Jay 2K Winger]

Interesting little note--

Our Mysteries of Albia campaign is about 75% finished, per our DM, with about two or three more of our detective cases before we reach the endgame around Level 10. Bob, our most experienced player, will be taking over as DM for our next campaign, which he's said will be in the Dragonlance setting, with some of his own homebrewed changes. Enough that he's written a near 50-page supplement for it, and will need multiple Session 0's to prep us for it-- one to go over the setting and whatnot we need to know, then another to roll up our characters, and possibly a third to finish set-up of our party before Session 1.

It has me excited, but also frustrated, since I don't know enough about the setting (and that's before Bob's changes) to start pre-planning my character and backstory. Can't wait to learn more.

[Jay 2K Winger]

D&D AL Waterdeep Dragon Heist--

So between my AL Waterdeep campaign happening every two weeks and my home game Waterdeep campaign skipping a session because most of the players were sick or recovering from a nasty cold, the two campaigns are at nearly the same point in each. AL Waterdeep just cleared the sewer hideout, but we ended up having to face off against not just the half-orc wizard, but also the mind flayer's pet intellect devourer. The flayer itself had hidden itself nearby and did take actions on its turns, but once both the wizard and the devourer were dead, the flayer revealed itself, advised us not to fight it, and then just left.

The intellect devourer did hold true to its name, however, as it was able to hit our bard with its party trick and reduced her Intelligence score to zero, effectively rendering her catatonic. After rescuing the "client" and getting back topside, we learned from one of the people we rescued that Volo, who had hired us, probably wasn't good for the 700gp he'd promised us. We weren't happy to hear this, especially after coming face to face with a damned mind flayer, so we reacted accordingly when we got back to Volo at the Yawning Portal tavern. I got to have some fun with this. My character Pell may be the party's Cleric, but that doesn't mean that he's always nice.

Volo: So, er, I take then that Floon is--
Pell: Safe. Renaer is taking him to a healer as we speak.
Volo: Excellent! This calls for a celebration! Mozarella sticks all arou--
Pell: Wait, hold up, because the job spec never mentioned having to deal with a mind flayer.
Volo: A mind flayer?! (takes out notebook) Tell me everything.
Pell: No.

This did break the table for a moment, including the DM. We got back to talking about payment, etc., and Volo admitted he didn't have the money, as such.

Volo: I, er, don't have that much coin on me.
Mouse: We also accept gems.
Pell: Or magical items.
Volo: I, er, I don't have gems or magical items. But I can offer you something potentially even more valuable. Property!
Us: Property?
Volo: Have you ever dreamed of owning your own tavern?
Pell: No.

It comes down to that Volo has the deed to a disused tavern in the city, which he is willing to sign over to us, and even cover the transfer of ownership fees ("How generous of you."), which our characters still weren't completely wild about, but we as players knew was necessary for the next stage of the campaign. So we agree to this, and will meet up with Volo in the morning at a nearby back to do the paperwork with one of the magistrates.

However, the party now doesn't completely trust Volo not to skip town on us, and I'm personally wondering if I should snatch Volo's hat or something, when...

Mouse: (OOC) I start reaching out and pulling his notebook toward me.
Volo: Ah! Excuse me, that is--
Pell: Collateral.
Volo: Those are my notes for my next book!
Pell: And as soon as the deed is signed over to us, you can have them back.

Volo also offered to help us get Ned the Bard fixed, giving us the address of someone who can help who owes him a favor. One trip halfway across town later, we've met this higher level cleric, who casts a Greater Restoration spell on Ned, restoring their mind. Long rest, we meet up with Volo at the bank, sign the deed.

Volo: Excellent! I can give you a tour of your new property, if you'd like. But, I would like my notes back please.
Burnie: Hold on, let's tour this place first.
Volo: I, er, believe the terms of the agreement were that I would get my notes back once the property was signed over.
Pell: Hold on, guys, he makes an excellent point. That was the agreement, and as we are people of our word, here are your notes back, sir.

Of course, we get to the property, and it's in some disrepair, it's got some broken floorboards, some subsidence, neglect, leaky roof and ceiling... All told, we're looking at 1000gp to renovate the place, plus more if we want to make Trollskull Tavern operational again. One player questioned why we'd even run the tavern, until I pointed out, "Once all that stuff is done, it's basically passive income for us."

We did joke that Matt-- a new D&D player (this would have been his third-ever session of D&D) who had to leave early due to some emergency-- is going to come back in two weeks, hear the recap and go, "Wait, what? We own a tavern now?!"

[Jay 2K Winger]

D&D AL Waterdeep Dragon Heist--

As predicted, Matt the Newbie was bewildered to hear that we'd acquired a tavern, but his contributions this week were minimal. He was very tired and mentally checked out, spending most of the session on his phone. He was apologetic about it, which gives him a pass in my book for this week.

No actual combat this session, since it was all to do with our getting the Trollskull Manor Tavern back up to operational status. Persuading the ghost haunting the place that we intended to keep the manor open as a tavern, and thus acquiring a ghostly bartender. (My Cleric admittedly did mildly threaten to exorcise him if he made trouble.) We had to decide on the decor/vibe for the tavern, and settled on "gothic Applebee's," then hire appropriately perky staff. ("We're wanna have a staff full of Abby's from NCIS.")

Then came the courting from various different factions, who'd heard about our clearing out the Xanathar Guild hideout, and who wanted to get us on side. We heard them all out, of course. Or, as it went--

Ranger: "We're business owners now, we're open to further opportunities!"
Me: "Right. We're adventure capitalists!"

This broke Ranger's player, which in turn broke most of the table, the DM and myself included. The DM even started leaning into that, and before long "Adventure Capitalists" became our party's name.

[Nunavut Pants]

Hosted gaming this month with the lightweight Friends Network crowd. Three games were played; one table of Mahjong, one table of Rummikub, and one table of TransAmerica.

I may push for one of my other games next time, possibly Splendor.

[Jay 2K Winger]

D&D AL Waterdeep Dragon Heist--

Our party of adventure capitalists spent most of this session following various leads from place to place and kept running afoul of bandits or thugs in the employ of the Xanathar Guild. The DM tried to tie us down with some combats against large numbers of enemies, but she'd forgotten she gave us access to a Necklace of Fireballs with two charges left. Our Warlock used them to great effect. First in one combat when the initial gang of five bandits were joined by like eight more, but Warlock just dropped a fireball on five of them.

Then later, as we're leaving a mausoleum where we found a macguffin, four duergar thugs ambushed us, getting a surprise round, but then Warlock hucked his last fireball at them. Three out of the four were wiped out immediately. The fourth took a ton of damage anyway. And then it was my Twilight Cleric's turn, so I used a spell called Toll the Dead, which hits them with necrotic damage if they fail the save. If they're missing any health, it's 1d12 damage instead of 1d8. And I rolled max damage on that 1d12. Which was enough to kill him.

The DM asked me, "How do you take him out?" I said my Cleric glared at him, pointed a finger, and declared, "Join your friends." And then the last duergar just bled out from every orifice before dropping dead.

As I quoted from Honor Harrington, "Why is it that people like you always think you're more ruthless than people like me?"

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Mysteries of Albia--

So we got to roleplay out some downtime stuff between cases for our party. A good chunk of that was put into three of the party's getting their coffee shop off the ground. But I also got to have the one-on-one conversation between my character, Charlie, and Eric's character, Vash; a convo that Eric had admitted that Vash wasn't looking forward to. When I brought up that Charlie was going to go find Vash, Eric said "Vash is hiding from him." The DM asked for a Stealth check against my Investigation check, and Eric rolled badly.

The key focus of the convo was that Charlie had noticed, despite her attempts to hide it, that Vash had been using magic. It had begun when she'd used Eldritch Blast in the sharpshooting competition, and then in our most recent case he'd seen her using magic. It was enough to rouse his suspicions. He did bring up that there was a spell called Finger Guns (included in our campaign from the same supplement that supplied the Gunslinger class I was using), which she tried to claim she'd been using.

But I'd anticipated this, and since no one else in the party used the Finger Guns spell, I was able to flavor it appropriately by having Charlie explain he'd been taught the spell while in the Army, and that mastering the spell required knowing everything about how a gun worked, mechanically and chemically. And given he'd seen Vash looking completely lost at how a gun worked in that same recent case, he knew the spell she'd used wasn't Finger Guns. The DM was impressed with my Columbo-esque observations and awarded Inspiration for it.

The basic gist of the conversation from there was Charlie asking Vash if she'd made some kind of deal with one of the various fiends that we'd encountered, or if it was in fact just from her fiendish-half Knives. Knives confirmed it was the latter, and Charlie just warned her, "If you get her too deep in debt, then I'll drop you where you stand."