Dungeons and Dragons (Part 3)

Yesterday we played DnD!  But I didn’t write up a summary because I fell asleep. 

So anyways, as the game began, the party was still in the city of Tek, preparing to roll out.  The Useless Bard went off to play music in the town square, and Nory the Gnome Warlock went off to summon a familiar.  He headed to a local temple, which had the kind of large Brazier he needed to complete the summoning.

Meanwhile, the rest of the party was eating breakfast, when they were brought a note from the mayor but a young child.  Ulfgar tipped the child with a single copper (much to the chagrin of the boy, who muttered that Ulfgar was a ‘cheap bastard’), then read the note to Henk and Dragon Man.  It was a summons! 

Completing their breakfast, they headed to the mayor’s office.  After their defeat of the bandits, and their refusal to run off with the chest of copper coins, the mayor trusted the adventuring party more than other adventuring parties.  He brought up the recent attacks by Gnolls upon the city, and mentioned that there was a fifty gold bounty on any Gnoll head.  But for the adventuring party, he was willing to offer 100 gold coins for every Gnoll head, and Ulfgar, speaking for the party, offered that at such rates the party would work to root out all the Gnolls living in the surrounding area.

To aid them in searching out these Gnolls, the mayor suggested they seek the aid of the old ranger known as Nightwing living on the edge of town.  Since the party doesn’t actually have anyone good at tracking, they decided that this was probably a good idea. 

The party quickly found the Useless Bard in the town square, then went looking for the Gnome Warlock.  Passing by a local religious temple, they heard the screams of the insane emanating from within.  A crowd of city folk was clustered about it, wondering what could be going on inside, but a helpful servant of the temple said it was nothing to worry about.  It was just a strange little gnome, praying. 

The party decided to wait. 

Inside, Nory finally summoned his familiar, which took the form of a tiny, adorable little bobble-headed Cthulu, a minion of the true Great One who slumbers deathless beneath the waves.  ‘Spread the word,’ it whispered.  ‘He is coming.’  Then it turned invisible. 

(Out of game, Boyle bought John an adorable Cthulu bubble-head figuring to represent his familiar.  It is pretty awesome.)

Nory exited the temple, and found his party waiting for him.  He didn’t say exactly what he had been up to in there, and the party didn’t ask, because gnomes, right?  What are you gonna do? 

Ulfgar filled in Nory and the Bard on what the Mayor had told them, and their new commission, and then the party headed out to the edge of town to meet Nightwing the Ranger. 

Unfortunately, when they arrived, they found not a older human male ranger, but two human females, arguing.  Dragon Man attempted to kick down the door, because he is Dragon Man, and then Ulgar knocked politely.  The party then learned from the two women, who turned out to be Nightwing’s wife and daughter, that Nightwing had set off into the woods a few days ago, but had not returned, and should have been back by now.  The daughter was planning on heading out to look for him, insisting she knew enough about rangering to find him, but her mother would not have it.  Ulfgar described the nature of their quest, and why they had sought out Nightwing, and offered to bring the daughter with them and look after her, and hopefully, with her own ranger skills, she could help them track the Gnolls! 

The daughter’s name was Becky.  Becky was not actually that good a ranger. 

The party set out in their wagon, hitching both the mule and Dragon Man’s draft horse to it, and hiding Dragon Man with the rest of the party in the back of the Wagon.  Their plan was to lie in wait for some of the gnolls to attack them, and they figured this was less likely to happen with a seven foot tall Dragonborn riding along beside them. 

While traveling, Becky took out a book of her father’s, labeled Monster Manual, and began to read to the party about Gnolls.  Dragon Man, who is a lawful neutral PALADIN, immediately began planning ways to kill her, so he could take her book.  (Perhaps the reason the good aligned members of the party don’t notice their Warlock is consorting with Dark Forces of Eternal Madness is that, next to their Paladin, he seems pretty harmless.)

Soon, the party came upon an overturned cart, being scavenged by hyenas.  The party rode up and jumped out to fight them off, and two of the hyenas turned into gnolls and picked up dropped weapons to attack them.  And then a massive hyena emerged from behind the cart!

The party, of course, kicked their asses.  Becky was pretty useless, but not as useless as when the Bard tried using his awesome new spell Thunderwave.  (Ulfgar’s Scorching Ray was also a bit of a bust.)

The party cut the heads off the hyenas and Gnolls, then set Becky to work trying to strip and cook one of the hyenas.  They found nothing much of value in the overturned cart, except 12 unbroken glass vials and the boxes used to carry the remaining broken vials.  They turned the cart over, cleaned out the broken vials, and stored the heads in one of the boxes.  Dragon Man hooked his horse up to the cart, proclaiming that the cart was his now. 

They moved off the road and began hiding their carts, when they heard the sound of hoof beats and bells coming down the road from the direction of Sana Bell.  Heading out into the road, Dragon Man strode into the center, and suddenly a covered wagon appeared, drawn by what appeared to be a Unicorn (but was later revealed itself to be a white horse with a fake horn attached to its bridle.)  The driver was a famous gnome illusionist, who traded in magical trinkets!  Dragon Man offered to trade him the giant Hyena head for something, and the gnome offered some kind of necklace, that made the wearer feel cold. To test it, he asked Ulfgar to hurl a firebolt at him.  Ulfgar did.  The firebolt did 4 points of damage.  Angry that the cold necklace didn’t do what he wanted, Dragon Man stated that he wouldn’t trade the Hyena head for it, but the Gnome Illusionist insisted that the trade was already made, and all trades were final.  Dragon Man threw the necklace back into the Covered Wagon, and then tried to attack the Gnome, but the Gnome played with his head, made it look like Henk The Tank had a Hyena head, and Dragon Man tried attacking Henk.  Ulfgar wanted no part of this and walked to the back of the cart to get out of the way.  A little annoyed by the shiftiness of the gnome, who seemed to have cheated them out of the Hyena Head for a useless bauble, Ulfgar looked into the back of the cart, and nicked the first thing he could see.  He then ran off of their cart to hide it, and on the way, remembered that there was a magical mechanical fish hidden there.  Meanwhile, the Useless Bard inexplicably managed to resolve the situation with Dragon Man and Henk by casting Tasha’s Hideous Laughter on Dragon Man, causing him to fall over laughing before he could attack Henk.  Ulfgar ran back up with the Mechanical Fish, and asked if there were any useful items they could trade this for.  The Gnome offered a lantern whose light revealed that which was invisible, and Ulfgar accepted the trade.  The lantern revealed that there had been a half-ogre in the Gnome’s Wagon the entire time, which gave Ulfgar a bit of fright (apparently he hadn’t seen Ulfgar nick the bauble, as he was facing the other way), and the party saw Nory’s familiar for the first time, but mostly ignored it.

The gnome then headed out on his way, as Ulfgar suggested it would be a good idea to leave before Tasha’s Hideous Laughter wore off on Dragon Man.  Coming too, Dragon Man apologized to Henk for trying to attack him, and Henk was like, ‘it ain’t no thing’. Ulfgar showed the bauble he had stolen to the party.  Unwrapping it from the cloth it was in, it turned out to be a black orb with a question mark on it, the dot of which was a button.  Press the button, and a voice asked a riddle.  If you gave a wrong answer it said so, and a right answer for a ‘Correct!’  Nothing happened if you got the correct answer.  It just seemed to be a riddle asking toy.  Checking his pockets, Dragon Man found that the necklace, which they had thought was thrown away back into the cart, had reappeared in his pocket.  They later determined that the necklace, though making the wearer feel cold, actually protected you from the elements. 

As it was getting late at night, party hunkered down, and ate the hyena meat that Becky had taken forever to prepare.  They set watched, and during Nory’s watch, the second, they were attacked, with Nory alerting the rest of the party by screaming in pain after two electrical arrows nailed him in the chest. 

This battle did not go as well as the previous one.  Nory quickly hid underneath the wagon as Gnolls showed up, and the Melee people went off to fight them.  Ulfgar started hurling firebolts into the night, to try to scare people off, then went out to look for the person firing electric arrows.  Becky, who assumed these Electric Arrows belonged to her father, began calling out for him, and was quickly felled by them.  Nory noticed her lying limp from under the cart, and having been healed a bit by the Bard, was able to stabilize her.  In the middle of the melee fight, The bard eventually fell, but only after Dragon Man had joined Ulfgar in looking for the archer, leaving the two fallen people without a method of being revived.  Henk, like a boss, took out the last of the gnolls in the camp, then found a healing potion on the Bard and fed it to him.  Revived, the Bard was able to save Becky.  Ulfgar eventually found a trail through the tall grass they were in that lead off from the encampment, and guessed that the archer, who had moved about the encampment at seemingly impossible speeds, had fled.  He returned to the party, relating what he had seen. 

The party bunkered down again for the night, sleeping between the wagons.  In the morning, fully healed, they headed out with their animals to follow the trail left by the archer, who appeared to have been using Becky’s father’s bow.  Eventually, the savannah they were in turned to desert, and they ran out of water, and members of the party began dropping like flies and being set upon the pack animals, who carried on like champs.  Dragon Man was also fine, what with his totally useless Necklace that protect you from the elements. 

Eventually, they reached a cliff face, where at one point the Bard had seen figures in the distance heading towards.  Reaching the cliff, they finally found a new source of water, and took an hour to rest and recuperate, not knowing what new danger they were about to head into. 

Here the session ended. 

Dungeons and Dragons (Part 2)

We played DnD today!

So, when we left off last week, the party was standing in a cave, having just freshly killed a human boy-child who, with the help of a Demonic Teddy Bear, had been the cruel leader of a band of goblins.  The party discussed their options about what to do following this development.  Dragon Man wanted to go back to Bahah and tell it like it was and let the chips fall where they would, but Ulfgar argued for returning and just burning the compound down.  Most of the party was uncomfortable with this. 

Luckily, the Useless Bard found a signet ring on the boy, so they took that and burned the bodies of the child and the goblins and came up with a story about him being killed by the Goblins in a sacrifice to their evil god, Bhal.  Dragon Man grabbed one of the unburnt dead to bring back with us as proof they had slayed such beings to avenge the child’s death.  Ulfgar still argued that maybe we should attack the compound. 

The party camped out for the night to recharge and headed back in the morning, the return trip being uneventful except for Dragon Man stepping on a pile of poisonous snakes.  They scoped out the compound upon returning, but decided based o n the guard situation that maybe that wouldn’t work, so they went along on the while Lie Plan. 

It seemed that the Steward Tomas bough Ulfgar’s lies, but when they were brought before Lord Bahah, Ulfgar was less convincing, and Lord Bahah forced the truth out of them, which Dragon Man happily revealed, not being one to prefer subterfuge. 

Luckily, Lord Bahah was pretty understanding!  He was somewhat proud of his evil son for leading an evil goblin horde, but also didn’t mind that he was dead, what with him being evil and all.  It then was related that the Evil Demon Teddy Bear was a present to his son from Makana, an immortal human wizard with a Bahah Blast addiction living three towns over (and 4 weeks journey).  Lord Bahah very quickly blamed Makana for his son’s end, and swiftly hired the party to travel to Ispep, the city of Makana’s residence, and kill him, giving them 10 platinum coins each for supplies. 

The party took the job. 

Ulfgar bought a covered wagon and mule and supplies for the journey, while Dragon Man bought himself a Draft Horse, and the party set off that very day, with the Useless Bard holding the reigns, and Ulfgar, Nory the Mad Gnome, and Henk hiding in the back.  Nory found a strange somewhat magical clockwork toy hidden in a secret compartment in the wagon, but not much came of this at the time. 

The party began to hit a series of tolls on the road, which Dragon Man managed to pay only the five copper a piece for himself and the Useless Bard, as the other three adventurers were hidden away in the wagon.  They bedded down for the night in a campsite including a party of Magical Halfling Bards, and the Useless One got very drunk with them.  The rest of the party just went to sleep without a watch, and Henk shooed away one of the halfings that tried to watch their stuff. 

And the next morning, everything was still there!  The party headed on their way, hit another toll-booth, and stayed at another campsite, where their watch noticed a traveler arrive late at night that turned out to be…A Drow!  But the party pretty much left the Drow alone, and from him they learned that there was dog-like animals prowling the road.  Continuing on their journey, they found one such creature along the side of the road, slain, apparently by the Drow, with a poisoned crossbow bolt. 

Further along, they found a toll booth staffed by men who were obviously not real toll-guards, and after trying to get away with just not paying the toll, they noticed limp feet sticking out behind the toll-guards shack.  They returned to make battle, and defeated the two men revealed as bandits, as well as  their hidden bandit captain.  The real guards were dead, having been turned into phantom tollbooth guards, so the party took along the bodies of all five men on the pair of horses they found there, as well as the toll chest. 

Coming upon the next rest stop, they party found a peasant family being attacked by hyenas!  Luckily they were able to kill most of the hyenas, the last opting to run off into the woods, and used healing spells to save the father of the peasant family.  They then watched over the family for the night, as heroes do.

Coming to the next toll point, they turned over the bodies of the toll-guards and bandits, as well as the copper toll-chest, and then continued on, the toll-guards present there thanking them for delivering their compatriots justice.  They also mentioned that there were gnolls about up, to no good, and the party decided they would have to be more cautious on further travels, keeping lookouts and being battle ready while traveling.    

Luckily, thought, the rest of the journey was uneventful, and they soon arrived in the city of Tek, which was larger than Bahah but less nicely appointed.  Here the party stayed at an inn and replenished their supplies, glad for some time off the road.  Ulfgar also attempted to learn something of Makana the magician, and came away knowing of Makana’s seeming agelessness, and that he had lived is Ispep for two hundred years, in an ancient tower that was all remaining of some fallen castle from ages past.  The party prepared to leave Tek soon, and make their way to Sana Bell, the next city along the road. 

Here, the session ended.

Also, at some point Nory started to decode that text of Eldritch Darkness he has been carrying around, and learned it concerns the history and descriptions of beings called the Old Ones.  No one else in the party knows this is going on! 

Dungeons and Dragons! (Part 1)

Today we played DnD! It was at Ye Olde Raven House.  I bought snacks, Boyle was Dungeon Master, and Molly, (Jolly) Eric, Harper, John and I played. 

It all started with us at sea, sailing along the southern coast of Some Continent Yet To Be Named.  It was a dark and stormy night, and my character, Ulfgar Orebreaker, of the Orebreaker Clan, the Royal Hill Dwarf House that controls the gold trade in the lands to the north, was down in his bunk, counting the thousands of precious gold coins in his possession.  Then suddenly, a giant tentacle rose from the depths and split the ship in two!  This delighted to no end John's character, a gnome warlock named Nory who used to be an academic before throwing his career away to become a disciple of Cthulu.   He is now convinced the world is ending.

The ship sank into the depths, and Ulfgar was only able to save 25 of his precious gold coins.  Seemingly the sole survivors of the ship, our adventuring party washed up on an unfamiliar shoreline, in what later turned out to be much farther to the south than we thought we were, leading us to believe we spent several days floating upon the sea.  That we all survived is a seemingly miraculous event, one that we each attribute to different forces. 

After taking stock of our new situation, we suddenly found ourselves in a pitched battle with several dog-sized crabs, one of which Nory the Fanatic convinced to leave us along using his dark mental powers.  The others we cooked and ate, being starving. 

We then headed into the nearby forest, where we found ourselves set upon by wood goblins, who proved not too much trouble, especially since Molly's Half-Orc Fighter Henk (our Tank) had ridiculous rolls and killed pretty much everything in one go.  Eric's bard, who is mostly useless and who's name Ulfgar has not bothered to learn, climbed a tree and spotted some civilization in the distance, so we headed in that direction.  We made camp for the night, and Harper's Dragonborn Paladin Dragon Man met a nice tree who offered to watch over us while we slept.

In the morning, the tree gave the Party a quicker route to the mostly human settlement, which he seemed very cross about on account of the humans there loving to cut down trees.  We made our way there, and Ulfgar Orebreaker and his friends were given a warm welcome, on account of the illustrious Orebreaker name.  Once there, we learned the the place we had found ourselves in was called Bahah, after Lord Bahah, who lived inside a heavily guarded compound that dominated the surrounding edifices.  Asking Lord Bahah if he had any need for the services of an adventuring party, it turned out that his son had disappeared, and the nanny watching over him had been murdered and horribly mutilated.  Lord Bahah seemed generally unconcerned with this development, but his distraught trophy wife offered us one thousand gold to rescue her son and return him to her, which, after some unsuccessful attempts at bartering for more, we accepted. 

It was around this time that Nory the Fanatic of Cthulu remembered that Bahah Blast is a popular and addictive street drug in the North, and many of the details about the compound confirm that this was the place from which it originates. 

After receiving some trail rations and a meal, we set out along the trail of the missing son, Jack.  (During this time of rest, we heard many servants voice a desire not to see young Jack Bahah returned, which was curious!)  After following the trail for not too long, Henk the Tank was almost crushed between two swinging logs, but thanks to Molly's fantastic rolling skills, was able to jump to safety.  The party was attacked by four goblins, who we made quick work of, thanks in no small part to a magic missile Ulfgar split upon three of the four, allowing his companions to take out each of them with their subsequent attacks.  We found upon their bodies markings that Nory the Servant of Dark Lord Cthulu identified as denoting Bhaal, a Goblin God of Death, but no treasure of note. 
Next we came upon a tripwire, and saw goblins hiding in the distance, but Dragon Man raised his bloody greatsword, which scared them off, and we just walked over the tripwire and continued on our way. 

A ways on we found a door hidden in a forest, which lead us down to into a cavern.  Ulfar cast light upon Dragon Man's greatsword, since he was the only party member without darkvision. The cavern traveled down a ways at a height of about five feet before opening up into higher ceilings, then split off along two pathways.  We chose the one to the left, and Henk the Tank got lodged in a pit trap, but we were able to pull him (her?) out of it and continue on our way.  Turning a corner, we bumped into two goblin guards and their warpig, but we killed them rather quickly, thanks to Henk and Dragon Man not messing around. 

Up ahead we heard voices, so we sent off the Useless Bard to see what was there, and he reported back to us, using Ulfgar's messaging spell, the presence of goblins and some kind of human voice inside. 

Not wanting to mess around anymore, we charged in to do battle, and discovered— Jack the Boy was the leader of the Goblin Horde!  He was covered in his Nanny's blood and whispering to his Teddy Bear! 

The Goblins attacked us on his orders, and The Teddy Bear jumped to life with glowing red eyes, ran up to our Tank, Henk, and cast fear on him (her?), which was too bad because Henk find all monstrous things adorable. 

Realizing this was no time to mess around, Ulfgar Orebreaker, of the Orebreaker Clan, cast his second and final Magic Missile of the day on the Teddy Bear, and instantly killed it.  (This turned out to be super lucky, because Magic Missile was apparently just about the only thing that could get through its defenses and/or cause damage, and it was the most powerful thing in the room.)  The Teddy Bear morphed into some kind of evil insect thing and melted. 

The Party made short work of the remaining goblins.  The Useless Bard was almost useful when he grappled the kid, but Dragon Man stepped in and all but sliced the little bastard in half.  However, the tiny jerk was still alive!  Confident we were dealing with some bad business here, Ulfgar firebolted the little monster dead. 

Then we looted the place. 

Unfortunately, Molly chose this moment to stop rolling like a boss and totally whiffed on getting us anything good. 

So there we are standing, surrounded by bodies, short on treasure, and having freshly killed the kid we had promised a drug kingpin we would bring back alive, wondering what to do next.  Cliffhanger!

Stan and Jack

So, I have been recently started reading and rereading the original runs of Fantastic Four and Amazing Spider-Man.  This has in part been spurred on by questions about the relative influence of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby upon comics, and who deserves the bulk of the credit for Stuff.  Due to the existence of Spider-Man, Amazing Fantasy #15, and the fact that I can't really justify giving Steve Ditko much credit for the ideology underlying a character like Spider-Man ("With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility" is a sentiment diametrically opposed to the ethos of Objectivism), I have often in the past given Stan Lee a lot of the credit for the Marvel Universe, the Marvel Ethos, and a larger influence on comics in general.  But, most people these days seem to give Kirby the bulk of credit for such things, perhaps in response to the undeniably shabbier treatment Kirby has received at the hand of Marvel and the general comics industry (Does Kirby's family see any more for the New Gods?  I mean, one of these days Darkseid is going to be the major villain in a major motion picture.  Why the Kirby estate see any money from that?). 

Anyways, today I went on Wikipedia and added up some numbers.  Keep in mind that I added up all of these number on a computer calculator, so there is a distinct possibility that I have some major errors in here. 

For the total number of comic titles that Stan Lee has either a writer, plotter, or co-plotter credit, there are 946 entries listed on Wikipedia, by my addition.  However, Strange Tales, Tales to Astonish, and Tales of Suspense usually ran two stories, and some of his credits for those titles were listed twice, so the actual number of individual issues involved is lower by a significant number, maybe as many as 100.  Lee's only other listed credits are one thing for Simon and Shuster and the 15 comics for DC, 14 of which were just some BS hype thing called Just Imagine Stan Lee Creating where the conceit was Stan Lee created classic DC heroes based off of just the names.  I remember those being pretty terrible and not counting for any sort of legacy. 

Jack Kirby has 532 stories listed for Marvel Comics.  Now, none of his stories for those three anthology stories listed above overlap.  However, in each place he is listed as performing one of the stories, so giving him a credit for full title for each of those probably justifies giving Stan Lee double credits for when his anthology title credits overlap.  But to be even, it's absolutely necessary to point out that drawing each of these titles was a much more time consuming process that writing them, especially given that this is the Marvel Method we are talking about.  In addition to that, Jack has credits for 29 issues of Timely Comics, the work he did for what eventually became Marvel Comics, including the the work where he co-created Captain America.  He also has credits on 284 comics from DC, and 113 comics from other publishers, resulting in a total comics credits of 958.  Considering many of those titles are ones where he is either a co-plotter or full on writer, that really is just a staggering achievement in Comic Storytelling. 

Also, the Wikipedia section on Characters Created By Stan Lee has 347 entries, and Characters Created by Jack Kirby has 316 entries.  No idea how accurate either number is, or what even counts as a character here.  So those number could be completely arbitrary. 

fragment

Word wedded whispers lie weighty in the boughs of burl trees, leaves shivering lyrical quivers as the poetry passes through the night.  The spirits are awakening, under moon bathlight and starry firmament, they come traipsing stumbling floating flying wafting on a whiff of air, on a weak whirl of wind.  Elsewise, a wolf howls.  The frogs ribbet. The crickets violin.  A fearful memory, a loving touch, a warm bed of soft sheets.  Darkness sits everywhere behind the light.