xkcd honors Gary Gygax.

If you read Nodwick, you’ve probably already seen these, but for those who do not, I recommend a few holiday-themed jaw-droppers:
The icosohedral pecan pie. (Holy Mother of Pie Crust, Batman!!!)
The gingerbread TIE fighter.
And the gingerbread computer case.

The Wilhelm Scream video he points to is pretty fun too. (wikipedia explanation)

And FFN is pretty hilarious this week in an thoroughly horrible kind of way.

Life update: I live. I study. Lots going on, but somehow there’s always time to goof off. How does that work? All right, Beowulf, here I come.

This should come to nobody’s surprise.

What is your Alignment?
created with QuizFarm.com

Edit:
I don’t know why it didn’t give me the html for the bar graph like it did for Elf and Crunch… Oh well. Enough to say that Lawful Good and Neutral Good were tied at 90%. Yay for D&D geekiness!!!

As you’ve all noticed, the site has a new look! I’m very excited about this; it’s been so bare for so long. Feedback is most welcome. The background started out as ripples in sand, but after grinding it through Photo Shop’s pattern generator it now looks more like crinkled paper. I rather like it, though, so it stays - at least for now. Obviously the right hand side of the title banner looks bad - I have an idea of how to fix it, but can’t promise that I’ll get to it before I leave on Tuesday. This is a blog, not a business, folks.    (And a good thing, too, I know, I know.)

All right, you’ve waited long enough. Here we go.

When we left off, Petra, Nadrak, Sheva, and Hamere-the-mostly-NPC had found the knights in the abandoned temple and had returned to Prideth Manor. They chose to march straight in the front door (Nadrak in Trumpet Archon form again), where they were confronted by Solenne, Vasiliki (two of Duessa’s buddies from the third floor), and the marlith from the second floor. They were no match for our heros.

The party decided to poke around the first floor this time, just for grins. They carefully avoided the library, and tiptoed around the destrachans lurking in the music room, but directly confronted a trio of devourers in the banquet hall. As the monsters tried to run away, the battle moved into the billiard room, interrupting a game of pool between two night hags.

After slaying the lot of them, the party reminded the mirror that it had seen them before with “Duessa,” so it had no problem letting them through. (I think the mirror was made by Microsoft. It tried so hard to seem intelligent…and failed so badly.)

Waiting on the third floor were a group of Duessa’s pals. One was Sansfoy, the supposed prince of Orant who was with Duessa when the party met her on the road (at which point she was using the name Fidessa). Two more men looked exactly like Sansfoy (well, if you looked really close, there’s this tiny freckle above his eye…  ;) ). With the brothers was Blaine, a low level wizard who had been with the group lounging around on the third floor the day before. The brothers were killed, leaving the party in charge of some nifty swords known as the Royal Questing Swords of Orant. I think Nadrak has one and Sheva has one right now. Blaine, however, was captured, interrogated, and used as a meat shield.

The party proceeded through Duessa’s room into her private library, which was full of books about demon summoning, and dealing with the demons once you’ve got them here. (Yes, I said Dealing with Demons. Also . Many apologies to Patricia C. Wrede, whose books are more fun than a barrel of monkeys! Ooooh, speaking of which, I got a new one the other day! Not related to the afore-referred-to series, but also by Wrede. Sorcery and Cecelia, which caught my eye because of its subtitle, or, The Enchanted Chocolate Pot. A title like that, and by Wrede - glee!!!!!!

ahem. End tangent.)

Right, Duessa’s library, demon books. And about this time, Liz had to leave…so then there were two.

On the other side of the library they found Archimago’s room, and in there, a secret staircase up to the fourth floor. The room directly above Archimago’s was bare except for another mirror. This one was probably the Mac version of the one on the first floor, and it gave a pair of rather more intelligent riddles. One was even original…at least in the sense that I made it up. The second was verbatim Tolkein. Nadrak and Petra came up with the correct answers and the door was revealed, if not the room that followed. It was enshrouded in deeper darkness. I forget what they did to that…dispel it? I think so. Anyway, Petra was then able to find the hidden door.

In the next room, Nadrak was sucked into a mirror himself. This was particularly funny, since they were still dragging Blaine around. Miraculously, Blaine made the will save….and somehow, Nadrak did not. So Nadrak was pulled in. After some deliberation, Petra broke the mirror, dumping both Nadrak and Junko back into the world….in the same condition in which they entered it the first time. When both were decent, Junko explained that he had been asked to spy on Duessa after she came to the head of his temple trying to recruit clerics to her cause (freeing Mab and placing her back on Miralana’s throne). After that, Nadrak turned Blaine into a duck, and tossed him first into the next room.

With the mirror dealt with, Petra found the next hidden door, and they found a small room with a puzzle straight out of the first Harry Potter. (It’s one of my favorite parts, and didn’t make it into the movie, which is understandable. Of the obstacles at the end, this one is the least cinematic. Except perhaps for the ko’d troll, which was also left out of the movie, and I’m on a tangent again. End tangent.)

By this time, you’ve probably realized that I made them solve the potion bottle puzzle. They did it, too. I was pround. That solution, of course, opened the door to the last room. Duessa and Archimago were both there, as was the mirror with Mab in it. Duessa used several walls of force, and Petra summoned several monsers to come help. Unfortunately, several members of the party were ethereal at the time, which kept Nadrak from turning on the dimensional anchor, which allowed Duessa and Archimago to banish Petra’s beasties without too much trouble. Of course, Petra, Nadrak and company won out in the end. They retrieved Mab’s mirror from Duessa’s bedroom - during the battle, she had dimension door’ed away with the mirror. The party took the mirror back to Miralana, who awarded the party lots of gold and assured them that Mab would not have another opportunity to escape.

Eventually, Nadrak met up with Geeves, the butler again. He had sold Goglia (Archimago’s fortress) for big bucks to a man with olive skin and black hair. The fellow said he had recently left Orant, even through he had been a nobleman there. Said the government had become much more harsh there in the last few years….

THE END

After Petra poked around the guest bedrooms, there were two hallways to choose from, so the party picked the one to the left. I mean right. I mean my left. Errr, yeah. (Which way was it, Elf? *evil grin*)

Anyway, this corridor led to Duessa’s office. A coven of night hags were conferring in the outer office, and though they managed to infect Petra and Sheva with a nasty disease or two, Hamere was easily able to heal them.

The jackpot was found in the inner office. Desk drawers held (besides a bag you didn’t want to stick your hand into) coffers of gold and there was loose change under the couch cushions, but the whole family fortune was squirreled into hidden compartments in the columns holding up a pair of small statues. The desk also held the deed to the manor and a ledger. Petra snatched a page out of Nadrak’s book by claiming the deed, and Nadrak carefully noted the absense of massive quantites of money (and the deed) in the ledger. Petra also found a carefully hidden key.

Exiting the office, the party noticed that a new door had appeared around the corner from the top of the stairs, but Petra and Nadrak wanted to check out the last corridor. It led to the library. Heeheehee, yes, the library. The self-defending library. The bookcases shoot books at intruders, and the books then explode on contact. So much fun! And ya know, after a hydra and a dragon, it was the books that took certain characters way down in hit points….    Must have been War and Peace, as Elf pointed out. Petra finally threw a fireball at the bookcases, causing them to shoot flaming books, at least at first. Then realizing that setting her new house on fire was probably a bad idea, she turned her dreamstone into a kiddie pool, had Hamere fill it with water, then Nadrak turned himself into a baby elephant in order to spray the water on the fire.   
When Nadrak and Petra were finally done in the library, Sheva’s curiosity concerning the new door could finally be satisfied. Behind the door was the staircase to the third floor. Reaching the top of the stairs, they heard voices. One voice was expressing doubts about the loyalty of the monsters on lower floors, while another urged trust in Duessa and especially Archimago, the great wizard. A third broke up the argument.

Since Sheva was still enchanted to look like Duessa, she bluffed her way in, claiming that Nadrak, Petra (holding Sheva’s sword, which is bigger than Petra is), and Hamere were new allies. She fooled them all, even an older woman who turned out to be Duessa’s long-time best friend, Mette. She wanted to draw “Duessa” away to talk privately, which of course worried the party. Petra slyly snuck a dagger onto Sheva, who was otherwise unarmed. However, all Metta had to say was that she thought one of the company that Duessa and Archimago had put together was probably a spy, and offered a suspicion or two.

However, just as Mette and Sheva stepped out of Mette’s room, the real Duessa stepped out of a room across from them. Confusion and battle ensued, leaving three of Duessa’s friends dead (including Mette). The party teleported out as soon as possible.

After putting some distance between themselves and Prideth Manor, the party camped for the night, and in the morning, proceeded to another location that the bandit had put on their map: an abandoned temple. It was much the same as the one Tae and Nadrak saw and circled around early on in the adventure, but this time the party explored. Petra found the secret stairs down to a basement level, where they found the final four knights who had tales of being tricked and captured. They were grateful to be freed and headed back toward Miralana’s capital. The party headed back to Prideth Manor to take care of their unfinished business.

After an encounter with a group of bandits, the party spent the night in an extra-dimensional space, conveniently provided by Nadrak. However, Tae was called away by her deity during the night (that’s the goddess of Oreo cookies for those of you who hadn’t heard this fairly recent development). Fortunately, her goddess is lenient, and allowed her to call a couple of old buddies in to cover for her: an old friend from her novice days, Hamere (Theresa), a cleric of Pelor, and an old friend from her rebellious finding-herself days, Sheva (Liz), a bonafide whirling dervish. Needless to say, Nadrak and Petra were decidedly surprised to discover Tae’s disappearance and meet this pair when they left their shelter in the morning.

The new and improved party warmed up by beating the tar out of a second bandit party. One escaped, but another was captured, and they got some information out of him. He essentially told them that Archimago was organizing bandits to harry anyone who looked like a danger to their plans (i.e. adventuring good guys). He also pointed out a couple of pertinent locations on their map.

Later that day, the party finally arrived in Spens, where they found a very large hydra guarding the entrance to the main city and to Sir Edmund’s castle. However, since the gang had been windwalking the whole way, they bypassed the beastie for the moment in order to fly in and have a chat with Sir Ed and his daughter Aemelia. She was very glad to see the party, and told them all about the beast situation. For one, someone was definately censoring the mail: letters from Miralana to Spens got through. Letters from Sir Edmund to Miralana got through. Letters from Aemelia to Miralana did not. Obviously someone knew who was running the place and who was senile. For another, unknown to Miralana, a few knights had gotten to Spens, and there had been more than one beast. The first had been a fairly young red dragon, who had been dispatched by a knight called George. Unfortunately, George was still camping when a white dragon flew in the next morning, so he got et. This dragon was slain by a pair of knights who arrived a few days later. Unfortunately, it was replaced by a pit fiend, and when they attempted to take it down the next day, they did not survive the attempt. Aemelia has no idea what happened to this monster - one morning it was just gone, and this eleven-headed Lernaean pyrohydra was letting no one out of the city.

Aemelia graciously opened her potions cupboard to the party before they went out to tackle the hydra, which they did…in three rounds. (Like I told them them during the next session, I was amazed - they were doing nearly 100 points of damage to my poor beastie per round.)

From her spot on the town wall, Petra found the magical device that had been summoning the monsters and broke it, though they suspected to find one last monster in the morning. They were, of course, right.

Before they took on the big red dragon, the party had a chat with Sir Edmund over breakfast. He told them all about the fight he lead fifty years ago against Queen Mab and her trusted lieutenancts (so to speak), Archimago and Duessa. He doesn’t know quite what Mab’s fate was, though. He’s heard all the stories about getting trapped in caves or oak trees or being banished to another plane, but all he knows for sure is that she was turned over to a trio of powerful spellcasters. Two have died of old age since then, but the third, is still alive. Santhymum Treehollow, an elf, is currently living in Riverman’s Junction, an odd little town in Orant, the country to the south.

Highlights of the fight with the red dragon included a shot to the eye by Petra and Hamere’s Harm spell, which took care of the last hundred hp.  
After Nadrak checked on the progress of his dominated butler, the party made a little detour to Riverman’s Junction to talk to Santhymum. After being sufficiently quirky, she revealed that she and her fellow mages had trapped Mab in a mirror where she could see and listen, but not speak or act. The mirror had been carefully guarded in a museum for the last fifty years.

Santhymum also gives the party an Amulet of Dimensional Anchor that can be turned on or off.

The next destination for out heros was a spot the bandit had marked on the map as Prideth Manor. After talking to a friendly groom, they were met at the door by a pair of vrock. The bone of contention on this floor was the magic mirror guarding the staircase. It wanted the party to go flip some switches, and some of the party wanted to bypass such nonsense. The mirror was not very smart, however, and was easily convinced to show an image of the last people to pass through it. One of them was Duessa herself. The clever solution was to enchant Sheva to look like Duessa and bluff past the mirror. On the second floor, Petra crept about, poking her head into doors. She found rooms with monsters, rooms with nobody, and a room with a buzzing, which turned out to be an ebony fly in a little box with a fair bit of gold. Only Sheva was with her at this point, so they split the loot and said nothing to the others.

We broke at this time, and so shall I before my fingers fall off.

Then the party hit the road and we had a long, drawn out battle during which the DM learned…or re-learned…a lesson or three. They were attacked in the woods by a band of rogues, which included a pair of spellcasters and a cornugon….

Oh, and Tae - I DO see your point about my retainer looking like a butterfly from the right angle.   

See Sept. 1, 2004 for the current version of the quote list. -Ed.

With all that out of the way…here is part 3 of the current D&D campaign. This is as far as we’ve gone.

The following day, Tae and Petra were back on the road. The terrain was getting rockier and steeper until they came to a fortress set on a stony slope (yay synonyms!) The front door was huge, and while Petra could easily have gotten herself up to the knocker, they decided that the front entrance was perhaps not the wisest idea. They went around looking for windows, and the first one they found was indeed at ground level - it looked like a prison cell or a dungeon.

At this point, Nadrak rode up on his charger, Destrier (sp?? Give me a hand here, Pug), and the girls filled him in on everything. Petra quickly got over the facts that (A) Nadrak is a drow and (B) despite Tae’s inadvertant insinuations, he did not in fact seem gay. So then at THIS point, thost huge front doors swung open and out walks a twelve foot tall man with skin as black as coals and bright red hair. He demanded to know what they were doing on his front lawn, refused to believe that they were sightseers, learned that they were on a quest looking for missing knights, and invited them to lunch. The party accepted.

The giant, who introduced himself as Orgoglio, led them through a front hall covered in mirrors into a cavernous dining room with a long, heavy wooden table in front of a large roaring fire, a la some Gothic novel, or Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. Lunch consisted of a large hunk of beef and berry juice a la Arsenic and Old Lace… (”For one gallon of elderberry wine…” heeheehee!!)

Ahem. Right, so the juice left Tae and Nadrak knocked out cold - Petra was wise and put nothing in her mouth. She was also wise enough to play along rather than take on a fire giant by herself, so she was concious as the three were picked up and carried down to the far reaches of the dungeon. After waiting a safe interval, she woke up her companions and they plotted about how to get out. Though it was a tough one, even for her, Petra picked the lock on the door. Upon peering out, they discovered that a group of Barbazu (a kind of devil) were waiting for them. The party dispatched them with the ease of much practice, especially after Nadrak temporarily turned himself into a Trumpet Archon, and Tae enlarged herself.

After finding a secret door and poking through a wee bit of the dungoen, the party decided that this was really not what they had planned to do today, and wanted out. Petra pulled out her handy portable hole, stuck it on the ceiling, and everyone climbed/levitated/spider-climbed up into a fairly nondescript room on the first floor, then repeated the process to get out a window.

Then the group quickly agreed that Orgoglio was a real jerk and ought to get what was coming to him, so they went back to the front door and knocked. The door was opened by a butler they had noticed the first time they came in. Nadrak quickly cast dominate person on him, wrenched out all the information he could about current situations, which I will not spill here - Nadrak has yet to explain it to Tae and Petra, and I wouldn’t want to do his job. He then asked the butler (think Jedi mind trick) to take them to his master.

The butler led them to a third floor room in one of the towers, where they found not a giant, but a tall, black-haired man among his papers and books. The butler introduced him as Archimago. Nadrak tried to pose as a messenger from Duessa, telling Archimago that Queen Mab was going to try to take over the country again, but Archimago spotted him right away for a fake. He polymorphed, becoming Orgoglio, and the battle ensued. To the party’s dismay, he grabbed a wooden charm just like the one Biff had, and teleported away.

Queen Miralana herself was probably half-celestial. She had the height of an elf, feathered wings, and black hair. She seemed ageless, and had an unusually intense gaze. She invited her guests to feast with her. At dinner, she explains herself. The land of one of her earls…

(Aside. Contrary to last night, I’ve decided to call them all earls rather than lords, because I think I can get away with using it for the women, too. I don’t know what the English call a female earl, and for this, it doesn’t really matter. This is my world and earl is a good word. Plus, we get to sing Duke, duke, duke, duke of earl, duke, duke, duke of earl… err, right. End aside.)

The land of one of her earls, Sir Edmund of Spens has been usurped by what Miralana refers to only as “a foul beast.” She says that this is because that’s all Sir Edmund’s letter’s have called it. She implies that he is getting on in years, and his eyesight not be good enough to get a good look at it, and he is too stubborn to trust the judgement of those around him. She has sent many of her best knights to his aid, but the messages Sir Edmund send her say that none of them have arrived.

Apparently she had not only been seeking a healer, as the old man in the inn seemed to think, but an entire group of adventurers. Tae admitted that she had some friends in that line of work whom she could contact. Miralana asked that they go to Sir Edmund’s aid, and hopefully discover the fates of her knights along the way.

So Tae contacted Petra, and Nadrak went window shopping. In fact, he got so caught up in it, that Petra and Tae went off without him. (aka J.C. goes to Europe)

Petra had been having adventures of her own in Waterdeep, among other places, that involved breaking into a jail (to rescue a friend), which involved setting off a fireball on a box of fireworks to create a diversion. Tae’s call was conveniently timed just when Petra needed somewhere else to be.

As they left Astrae, Tae told Petra all about Nadrak….inadvertently giving her a very wrong impression of him.

“Hi, Petra? I’m in the Court of the Fairy and I met this guy….but it’s not like that…”

“Be careful, he’s very sensitive. And he really enjoys shopping…”

“…and he really doesn’t like females of his race…”

You see what I mean.

After leaving the city, Tae and Petra travelled south toward Spens. The road ran along the edge of the forest, and when it began to rain, the dense forest looked drier and increasingly more inviting. Unfortunately, they ran aross a pair of wyverns who had thought the same thing, and were getting hungary. The pair dispatched them with their usual style.

Presently, the forest thinned and no longer held back the rain. Just before it got truly miserable, Tae and Petra came across an adorable little cottage with a fresh coat of paint (pale yellow with blue trim), surrounded by a garden filled with herbs and flowers. A garden flag sported dragons flying over a field of daffodils. They were met at the door by a friendly fellow who called himself Biff the hermit. He had an armload of warm towels and promptly invited them to dinner, claiming that visitors were few and far between. The evening was spent telling tall tales by the fire. Most of them were true.

Tae and Petra slept by the fire, but they did not have a pleasant night. Both were troubled by visions appearing in a room that was normally Biff’s pantry. Petra marched upstairs to interrogate Biff while Tae examined the pantry, but Biff was dodgy and all Tae could tell was that strong spells had been in effect in the pantry. Their biggest find was in a secret compartment in Biff’s desk: letters from “Duessa” to “Archimago.” They were about to tear Biff to pieces when he grabbed a wooden charm and teleported away. Our friends hit the road early.

On the road they came upon a pair of campers about to hit the road as well. They were reluctant to give details, but Tae and Petra gradually realized that the couple were eloping. They had come from north of Waterdeep (her home), and were heading to the capital of the country to the south, Orant (his home). He claimed to be the youngest prince of Orant, and he introduced her as Lady Fidessa. They travelled with Tae and Petra for a while.

During the day, they came across a girl talking to a tree, only he wasn’t a tree, he was her brother, enchanted by the sorceress Duessa. Petra restored the young man with a scroll of Greater Dispelling. He turned out to be one of Miralana’s knights, albeit a young and unaccomplished one. He said he and the other knights had met a beautiful lady on the road, who had offered them wine. Tae and Petra decided to send the pair back to Astrae with a message for the queen.

Late in the day, Fidessa and her knight turned slightly west, heading for the house of people they knew. They invited Tae and Petra to come along, but they declined. As dusk fell, another group of bandits attacked, but they were no match.

Now that only leaves last night’s adventures. Will finish later! Odette out.