Tubular Bells!
We played a whole session without my character dragging some poor guy into a corner! Of course, I did throw a pretty big party in a Castillian port. It's unlikely that I slept alone that night, but I neither used my wiles to extract information/services nor had my Lecherous Hubris activated. Funny how fear quells the libido...
Bear decided to take us to Eisen for our second to last game and his intent was to make it a Thriller session. (Not as in Michael Jackson... as in movies, doof.) Things were going pretty well until he turned out the lights and allowed us only the illumination from a hurricane lantern set on the table. He began rattling chairs and banging on things randomly as we tried to discuss how not to be cut into little pieces by the Snipsnip Man. The damn, dumb dog even got in on it, making a noise in the kitchen while Bear was right in front of us and obviously not doing it. We were pretty jumpy, although several players were trying to pretend they weren't. One party member had an artifact that allowed him to see the location of any object and as our camp fire guttered he caught sight of the Snipsnip man's scissors... and right beyond them he could see our camp. And that, girls and boys, was when my darling husband, whom I love very much, screamed. Thankfully, he was not by my ear when he did so. (I think he knew I would have hit him.) He did scare the piss out of Drunken Sloth, who also screamed, which in turn incited a yelplette from Deadpan. If I had not been so startled, I would have been proud of my Bear.
The Snipsnip Man (I'm too lazy to look up what the thing's real name is... something German) killed a bunch of brutes and left scattered body parts for us to clean up. This was followed by a nice, normal fight for which we were allowed full lighting which reduced a bit of stress. However, immediately after that we found out we were going into a mine. Yay. We took our brute squad and nervously descended in the creaky elevator which only held four people. (Of course it did. We had a five person party.) We lost three brutes right there when they just didn't come down after us. Reduced to lamp light again, we started to see people-shaped shadows that had no people to go with them. We could hear what we assumed to be real people at the end of the tunnel, but progressed slowly, busy watching the shadows. Too slowly, it seems, for Bear chose to scream again (getting another yelp out of the very jumpy Sloth) and we were forced to rush down the tunnel. Another pretty normal fight. And then... then my husband blew out the lanterns and we just knew those shadow people were advancing on us.
We managed to get a couple of torches lit and establish that we weren't doing enough damage to the things - shadow is hard to hit - before I had an idea. I dunno how smart it was, but it worked. Hee! I set fire to the mine. The mine with old, dry timber and gas lights. ::nodnod:: The monsters went poof! And our Vestenmannavnjar guardian angel (er... crone is more like it) showed up to keep us from doing the same.
Now I just have to figure out how Bear called up the thick fog outside and everything will be fine...
Unrelated #1: I hate animals - most especially bastard cats who think they want to be outside. As if I needed that much adrenalin first thing in the morning... ::muttermuttercursespit::
Unrelated #2: The past few times we've gone to the movies in town, we've seen a trailer for The Last Samurai. I cannot help worrying, as I sit there, what the Japanese people around me think of the fact that a gaijin is presented as the last samurai. Imagine for a moment that you saw a trailer for a Japanese film depicting one of their own as the last wild west gunslinger. The presentation and/or story would not matter to many folks. There'd be people frothing at the mouth. And I can't imagine that the perceived arrogance of Americans helps at all. Maybe I'm just paranoid.