'Your mother would have wanted you to have this,'
the papa Viking tells his son, the scrawny kid Viking, presenting him with his very first horned Viking helmet. 'It was half of her breastplate.'
('Wow, Dad, thanks. For the... breast hat,' the kid answers feebly).
Egads, you guys, I laughed and laughed. Waaay louder and longer than I think it is predicted one will laugh at that joke. I suspect I made enemies of several of the other theatergoers.
It's just: for years now my sisters have been teasing me that my bra cup is bigger than my head. (And I have a big head, too, y'all). Someday that's going to be my husband - also, hopefully, played by Gerard Butler, heh - makin' hats for my kids out of my discarded breastplate. I better be sure to have no more than two kids - or else to have more than one armored breastplate. Otherwise it wouldn't be fair. I wouldn't want any child of mine to feel left out.
How to Train Your Dragon turns out to be a pretty entertaining movie. It was relatively low on the ever-lengthening list of movies I want to see, but I went to lunch with a friend after Easter service this Sunday and we got to talking about our department role playing group (of which she is theoretically also a member, though she hasn't been able to make it to a single meeting so far). Janelle, as it turns out, mainly wants to be in the role playing group so that she can be Carlos the Dwarf - just like James Franco in Freaks and Geeks. She got a little wistful hearing about all our latest adventures, so I told her that even if she didn't know when exactly she'd be freed up to participate, I had learned enough by now that I could walk her through the process of creating a character. (My very own copy of the massive Core Rulebook had been delivered just a day or so before). I told her about some of the other character classes available, the ones she probably hadn't heard of just from stories about our group, because we hadn't added any characters from those classes so far. She decided that Carlos the Dwarf was most definitely a druid. A laid-back James Franco stoner druid. And we went back to her place and promptly spent, like, four hours notating all the particulars of his druidity. Janelle expressed her satisfaction with the process by holding the statistics sheet up at the end and announcing, 'I am Carlos the Dwarf. My deity is Gozreh, and my leopard is Steve.'
I don't remember just when How to Train Your Dragon came up - maybe when we were discussing whether Carlos has a fancy braided beard with beads in it; there are A LOT of beards in HTTYD - but Janelle told me it wasn't just a good movie, it was the perfect movie. (I suspect she meant perfect for some particular theme of our conversation at the time, but sadly I don't know for sure what that was). She made it sound so much funnier and better than my very modest expectations that it sort of turned out to be exactly the movie I wanted to see, because now it came highly recommended, but I still didn't really *want* very much from it. I figured whatever I got would far exceed my requirements.
And that was more or less exactly how it worked out. Janelle promised Craig Ferguson and sarcasm and a really cute dragon. And, indeed, Craig Ferguson was there ('You're looking at this all the wrong way. It's not what's outside that counts. It's what's inside that your Dad can't stand!'), along with beards and sarcasm and a really cute dragon. The dragon in question was expressive and mercurial, and he had so many mannerisms in common with a kitteh that I had to sit on my hands to suppress the irrational urge to scratch his 3D belleh. I'm not sure I would want any of those other spiky dragons for a *pet,* but the little black dragon was a good dragon. A good, good dragon. (Aren't you, boy?)
It was pleasant enough just to hear Gerard Butler brogue his way through the role of the beefy Papa Viking. I think he would have done better to read certain key moments of the film with a little more depth of emotion - minor complaint - but egad, friends, Papa Viking's beard seemed to move with a life all its own, and that alone counted as entertainment. Like some arcane octopus construct synthesized from the practice knots of an industrious seafarer. If you tend to come away from a movie saying, 'not nearly enough intricately braided asymmetric CGI beard!', then this, as I have already hinted, is the movie you've been waiting for.
Incidentally, the main female character looked almost exactly like a cartoon Kirsten Dunst - the resemblance was, at times, eerie - but was voiced by America Ferrera. (No Latina Vikings, I guess). But she was a pleasantly rational and adaptable young female character. Not to mention badass. (By far the most promising, spiked-kilt-wearing Viking dragon slayer of her Viking adolescent crowd, which is the kind of detail to which many folks are apt to point when explaining what make a female supporting character 'stronger' than average. What I enjoyed most about Astrid was that she seemed genuinely volitional: there were a couple of moments where the direction of the story hinged on her reaction, and I honestly didn't know just what she would choose to do. Meanwhile, I recognize the importance of female characters who defy gender stereotypes by being great warriors or athletes, but I look forward to a day when not every strong girl character *has* to be the toughest and the ass-kickin'est and the best in order to be considered interesting. It should be okay for there to be dimensional girls and women of a milder stripe, too, just like there are tough male characters and milder-mannered male characters - but you've heard this rant before).
As long as we're talking of warrior women? Some seriously hot, large armored Viking women standing around amid the Viking throng (though we never meet any of them up close), and have you seen Resistance Fighter Ogre Fiona from the promos for the new 3D Shrek movie yet? The moment I laid eyes on the new concept for Fiona, all I could think was, 'OMG HALLOWEEN COSTUME!' Because of course I can choose to be anyone I like for Halloween, regardless of that character's usual build. But Fiona (as an ogre, that is) is one of the only easily recognizable female characters - especially young female characters and young female characters considered vivid and desirable - who actually has a body that resembles mine. Which gives her a special place in my heart. An elaborately embroidered gown is a lot of effort to go to on top of painting oneself green - but a distressed kilt and tunic with a great big leather belt? FUN! EASY! and HAWT!
Of course, seconds after revealing the awesome new Fiona, they show us that Puss-In-Boots has become hilariously fat. So hilariously fat that he can't clean himself anymore. See the hilarity, y/y? Have we completely run out of other things to joke about now? I harp on this, I do, but only because it's EVERYWHERE. Shrek is a freakin' story about how men and women both freakin' deserve to be loved as the ogres they truly are, but it's still an absolute scream for a character to go from sinuous and slim to debilitated and fat. (Because if someone truly is fat enough to experience debility, we certainly ought to laugh at them). Can't I like one thing without you having to bring this up, POP CULTURE? Keep your prejudices and over-simplifications to yourself, for once.
Speaking of role playing, here's an update on the recent progress of our quest.
In a good way, this time. We left off with the group (one wizard, one paladin, one gnomish rogue - me! - one drunken cleric and one sober one) making camp around the abandoned druid's altar that we found in the forest. We had just figured out how to approach the altar (from above) in order to read all the instructions carved on it, and had in doing so found the first of the five magic items we'd been sentenced to collect. That is, the first of the five magic items we've been ordered to blindly hand over to a delusional quack, who will probably just use his magic to reinvigorate them, then turn them against us and, I dunno, try to take over the world. But that part is going to have to wait for next week. We could see from the tracks left behind on the ground that our competitors, a second party of adventurers with an evil aura about them, had not been able to approach the altar closely enough to read all five inscriptions or find the magic breastplate. So they split up and went in the directions of the two clues they *were* able to decipher. We discussed going after one half of their group, so as to take maximum advantage of our superior numbers, but we decided we'd be better off postponing any (inevitable) confrontation until after we had found all the magic items we could; magic items might be able to help us. (Plus, we have a couple of seriously righteous dudes in our party, and they won't allow us to kill our enemies for the sake of strategic advantage. Not that I like strategic killing much, either. Though in my case it's more that I'm squeamish and sentimental, haha). Our wizard's local knowledge informed us that the 'heart of the forest' mentioned in one of the five clues referred to a derelict inn which once marked the place in the forest past which humans were not meant to go. We decided that since this was a local landmark, we ought to go there first, because it was one place our rivals might think to go and search, even without the aid of a clue.
While our wizard rested for the night, I informed the GM that I was making myself a sling. I had been hurting for a ranged weapon of even the most meager sort. (My kingdom for a hand crossbow!!!) 'I am perceiving things and picking up pebbles,' I told him, as we traveled the six miles to the abandoned inn.
We found the inn rotted and empty. The great room was scattered with wee Goblin skeletons. (I still don't know exactly what that was supposed to be about, beyond scary ambience). I looted some gold from behind the bar, and we found a hearth in which several coals still glowed with illusory (not actually hot) flame. 'I pick one up!' I shouted immediately. Because I am the rogue, dagnabbit, and I *never* get to pick anything up and keep it, because drunken cleric Ole is always beating me to it! Predictably, he wanted one, too. And so did everybody else. 'There are... five,' the GM assured us patiently, in a tone that indicated perpetually if weakly glowing coals are *not* worth all the fuss, and are beside the point.
We searched the hearth and found a secret compartment, but before we could look inside, we got attacked by a vine man who came in from the hole in the rotted back wall. He couldn't speak, had no intentions, and seemed to be some kind of magic security automaton. My damage dice are *so* low on anything other than sneak attacks that I immediately announced my intention to run out the door and around the back of the inn, so I could sneak up on the vine man from behind. It took me two turns to make it all the way, and when I got there the GM told me I couldn't perform a sneak attack, because a vine man has no vital organs, so there's no advantage to flanking him. Hmf.
The vine man was *really* hard to kill. He could regenerate, so it took a series of really lucky rolls to deal enough damage to even slow him down - none of which were rolled by me, because I was unconscious and dying from my vine-man injuries. Heh. Once we had him on the floor, the Fire and Light cleric torched him so he wouldn't come back.
We pried the Staff of Narvin from the hole in the hearth. It was encrusted with rubies and featured a pair of magically fluttering golden spirit wings. We decided the wizard in the group was most in need of a staff, so she got to keep it. (The fire guy got the breastplate. Is there never anything in that black bag for the gnoooooome?) Later, after being magically healed of my mortal wounds, I would make a point of cozying up to the wizard on our way to our next destination, so as to ask whether she thought the staff might not function equally well with somewhat fewer rubies. The GM laughed at me. 'There aren't *that* many rubies,' he pointed out. 'Only about a dozen.'
'That's more than enough,' I assured him. The stairs of the inn were rotted through (I fell through to the broom closet), so I had some of the others throw me to the upstairs landing so I could loot up there, too. I found an abandoned chest. The boys were worried that it might contain a cat that would be neither alive nor dead until the chest were opened. I was kind of hoping they were right - so long as the cat were alive - because Shroedinger's Cat would make an *awesome* pet. But it was just some coins and a vial of acid, which I pocketed because, hey, I have a lot of pockets and it might come in handy.
Next, we marched to the tallest tree in the forest. Shockingly, we all forgot to make herring jokes. We had to fight a giant beetle in order to get a degraded magic scroll down from a high branch. We ended up using wizard telepathy to bring down the scroll, but prior to that my best plan was to use the beetle's hooky feet as grapples to aid in climbing. (I still don't understand why you always take a penalty for improvising, if the improvisation seems like it would seriously *work.* Which, I stubbornly maintain, climbing with hooky feet probably would). With the acquisition of the scroll, we came to the last of the uncontested items on our list, so I scouted ahead in the woods as we walked to the fourth location. Sure enough, we came upon our four rivals - a ranger, a wizard, a goblin (dunno job), and an elven cleric devoted to an evil deity. I crept back to the others of my party and recommended silently surrounding them. As is to be expected, the paladin and the sober cleric refused, insisting they would confront the competing party openly and offer them mercy and cooperation. My character was minorly annoyed, seeing as it's not as if I planned for us to surround and *massacre* them. I just wanted to make them think twice about messing with us and confront them from a position of advantage and strength. (Plus, uh, sneak-attackery). But three people hiding in the bushes is more advantageous than no people hiding in the bushes, so I tried to count my blessings. Negotiations predictably went south. (It would be more fun, I think, if NPCs had more complex motivations, but these guys' intentions pretty much amounted to 'kill you and take your stuff').
We were extremely lucky, we later learned, in our choices during this confrontation. Our opponents out-classed us, but we somehow took them out in exactly the right order, so that none of their big guns had a chance to act before we neutralized them. I, uh, killed the wizard right out with my sneak attack - and felt bad about it, too. I knew I'd knocked him unconscious, but I didn't know he was dead until it was all over. I guess I am gonna have to kill lots of other people and things in this game, too, huh? There's really not an option, as far as I can tell, to sneak the point of your rapier to a fellow's throat and simply hold him at bay...
The only one of their party left alive was the ranger, and the boys tied him up and left him to work himself free after we'd gone. We learned from the ranger that the rival party had succeeded in finding the wand, but they'd been defeated at the site of the Vial of Pure Water, leaving one last item for us to acquire on our next meeting, before handing them all over to the sheriff and the quack. (The latter of whom will probably turn out to be evil and use the five items to form a Zord or a Gundam Suit and trample all over the countryside. Or something).
Now here's the funny part: at this point the GM informed us that we'd done the module all out of order, so that we had to really bite and scrap during our earliest battles but will be ridiculously over-powered (having leveled up starting next session) for the remainder of its challenges. Apparently, you're supposed to want to chase after the enemy team and decimate them a little at a time. Then you go looking for the scroll in the beetle tree. The inn is supposed to be the site of the final confrontation, where you come in on the opposing team removing the staff from its hiding place in the floor, only to be attacked by the vine man. Which results in a huge free-for-all, during which the vine man is attacking everybody, the two teams are attacking each other, and the goblin is using the fire wand to throw bursts of flame at everybody including his own teammates. But we went to the inn first, so we had no help with the vine monster at all, but also no other opponents. Which may be why there was a certain empty feeling of dangling expectation over the place.
Well, acquiring the vial should still be an interesting time. The Ranger reported that one of their teammates was bewitched at the site of the Vial of Pure Water and turned against the rest of them, which is why they were provisionally defeated. We'll have to see if that trap is still in place.
Till next time...!
.
('Wow, Dad, thanks. For the... breast hat,' the kid answers feebly).
Egads, you guys, I laughed and laughed. Waaay louder and longer than I think it is predicted one will laugh at that joke. I suspect I made enemies of several of the other theatergoers.
It's just: for years now my sisters have been teasing me that my bra cup is bigger than my head. (And I have a big head, too, y'all). Someday that's going to be my husband - also, hopefully, played by Gerard Butler, heh - makin' hats for my kids out of my discarded breastplate. I better be sure to have no more than two kids - or else to have more than one armored breastplate. Otherwise it wouldn't be fair. I wouldn't want any child of mine to feel left out.
How to Train Your Dragon turns out to be a pretty entertaining movie. It was relatively low on the ever-lengthening list of movies I want to see, but I went to lunch with a friend after Easter service this Sunday and we got to talking about our department role playing group (of which she is theoretically also a member, though she hasn't been able to make it to a single meeting so far). Janelle, as it turns out, mainly wants to be in the role playing group so that she can be Carlos the Dwarf - just like James Franco in Freaks and Geeks. She got a little wistful hearing about all our latest adventures, so I told her that even if she didn't know when exactly she'd be freed up to participate, I had learned enough by now that I could walk her through the process of creating a character. (My very own copy of the massive Core Rulebook had been delivered just a day or so before). I told her about some of the other character classes available, the ones she probably hadn't heard of just from stories about our group, because we hadn't added any characters from those classes so far. She decided that Carlos the Dwarf was most definitely a druid. A laid-back James Franco stoner druid. And we went back to her place and promptly spent, like, four hours notating all the particulars of his druidity. Janelle expressed her satisfaction with the process by holding the statistics sheet up at the end and announcing, 'I am Carlos the Dwarf. My deity is Gozreh, and my leopard is Steve.'
I don't remember just when How to Train Your Dragon came up - maybe when we were discussing whether Carlos has a fancy braided beard with beads in it; there are A LOT of beards in HTTYD - but Janelle told me it wasn't just a good movie, it was the perfect movie. (I suspect she meant perfect for some particular theme of our conversation at the time, but sadly I don't know for sure what that was). She made it sound so much funnier and better than my very modest expectations that it sort of turned out to be exactly the movie I wanted to see, because now it came highly recommended, but I still didn't really *want* very much from it. I figured whatever I got would far exceed my requirements.
And that was more or less exactly how it worked out. Janelle promised Craig Ferguson and sarcasm and a really cute dragon. And, indeed, Craig Ferguson was there ('You're looking at this all the wrong way. It's not what's outside that counts. It's what's inside that your Dad can't stand!'), along with beards and sarcasm and a really cute dragon. The dragon in question was expressive and mercurial, and he had so many mannerisms in common with a kitteh that I had to sit on my hands to suppress the irrational urge to scratch his 3D belleh. I'm not sure I would want any of those other spiky dragons for a *pet,* but the little black dragon was a good dragon. A good, good dragon. (Aren't you, boy?)
It was pleasant enough just to hear Gerard Butler brogue his way through the role of the beefy Papa Viking. I think he would have done better to read certain key moments of the film with a little more depth of emotion - minor complaint - but egad, friends, Papa Viking's beard seemed to move with a life all its own, and that alone counted as entertainment. Like some arcane octopus construct synthesized from the practice knots of an industrious seafarer. If you tend to come away from a movie saying, 'not nearly enough intricately braided asymmetric CGI beard!', then this, as I have already hinted, is the movie you've been waiting for.
Incidentally, the main female character looked almost exactly like a cartoon Kirsten Dunst - the resemblance was, at times, eerie - but was voiced by America Ferrera. (No Latina Vikings, I guess). But she was a pleasantly rational and adaptable young female character. Not to mention badass. (By far the most promising, spiked-kilt-wearing Viking dragon slayer of her Viking adolescent crowd, which is the kind of detail to which many folks are apt to point when explaining what make a female supporting character 'stronger' than average. What I enjoyed most about Astrid was that she seemed genuinely volitional: there were a couple of moments where the direction of the story hinged on her reaction, and I honestly didn't know just what she would choose to do. Meanwhile, I recognize the importance of female characters who defy gender stereotypes by being great warriors or athletes, but I look forward to a day when not every strong girl character *has* to be the toughest and the ass-kickin'est and the best in order to be considered interesting. It should be okay for there to be dimensional girls and women of a milder stripe, too, just like there are tough male characters and milder-mannered male characters - but you've heard this rant before).
As long as we're talking of warrior women? Some seriously hot, large armored Viking women standing around amid the Viking throng (though we never meet any of them up close), and have you seen Resistance Fighter Ogre Fiona from the promos for the new 3D Shrek movie yet? The moment I laid eyes on the new concept for Fiona, all I could think was, 'OMG HALLOWEEN COSTUME!' Because of course I can choose to be anyone I like for Halloween, regardless of that character's usual build. But Fiona (as an ogre, that is) is one of the only easily recognizable female characters - especially young female characters and young female characters considered vivid and desirable - who actually has a body that resembles mine. Which gives her a special place in my heart. An elaborately embroidered gown is a lot of effort to go to on top of painting oneself green - but a distressed kilt and tunic with a great big leather belt? FUN! EASY! and HAWT!
Of course, seconds after revealing the awesome new Fiona, they show us that Puss-In-Boots has become hilariously fat. So hilariously fat that he can't clean himself anymore. See the hilarity, y/y? Have we completely run out of other things to joke about now? I harp on this, I do, but only because it's EVERYWHERE. Shrek is a freakin' story about how men and women both freakin' deserve to be loved as the ogres they truly are, but it's still an absolute scream for a character to go from sinuous and slim to debilitated and fat. (Because if someone truly is fat enough to experience debility, we certainly ought to laugh at them). Can't I like one thing without you having to bring this up, POP CULTURE? Keep your prejudices and over-simplifications to yourself, for once.
Speaking of role playing, here's an update on the recent progress of our quest.
In a good way, this time. We left off with the group (one wizard, one paladin, one gnomish rogue - me! - one drunken cleric and one sober one) making camp around the abandoned druid's altar that we found in the forest. We had just figured out how to approach the altar (from above) in order to read all the instructions carved on it, and had in doing so found the first of the five magic items we'd been sentenced to collect. That is, the first of the five magic items we've been ordered to blindly hand over to a delusional quack, who will probably just use his magic to reinvigorate them, then turn them against us and, I dunno, try to take over the world. But that part is going to have to wait for next week. We could see from the tracks left behind on the ground that our competitors, a second party of adventurers with an evil aura about them, had not been able to approach the altar closely enough to read all five inscriptions or find the magic breastplate. So they split up and went in the directions of the two clues they *were* able to decipher. We discussed going after one half of their group, so as to take maximum advantage of our superior numbers, but we decided we'd be better off postponing any (inevitable) confrontation until after we had found all the magic items we could; magic items might be able to help us. (Plus, we have a couple of seriously righteous dudes in our party, and they won't allow us to kill our enemies for the sake of strategic advantage. Not that I like strategic killing much, either. Though in my case it's more that I'm squeamish and sentimental, haha). Our wizard's local knowledge informed us that the 'heart of the forest' mentioned in one of the five clues referred to a derelict inn which once marked the place in the forest past which humans were not meant to go. We decided that since this was a local landmark, we ought to go there first, because it was one place our rivals might think to go and search, even without the aid of a clue.
While our wizard rested for the night, I informed the GM that I was making myself a sling. I had been hurting for a ranged weapon of even the most meager sort. (My kingdom for a hand crossbow!!!) 'I am perceiving things and picking up pebbles,' I told him, as we traveled the six miles to the abandoned inn.
We found the inn rotted and empty. The great room was scattered with wee Goblin skeletons. (I still don't know exactly what that was supposed to be about, beyond scary ambience). I looted some gold from behind the bar, and we found a hearth in which several coals still glowed with illusory (not actually hot) flame. 'I pick one up!' I shouted immediately. Because I am the rogue, dagnabbit, and I *never* get to pick anything up and keep it, because drunken cleric Ole is always beating me to it! Predictably, he wanted one, too. And so did everybody else. 'There are... five,' the GM assured us patiently, in a tone that indicated perpetually if weakly glowing coals are *not* worth all the fuss, and are beside the point.
We searched the hearth and found a secret compartment, but before we could look inside, we got attacked by a vine man who came in from the hole in the rotted back wall. He couldn't speak, had no intentions, and seemed to be some kind of magic security automaton. My damage dice are *so* low on anything other than sneak attacks that I immediately announced my intention to run out the door and around the back of the inn, so I could sneak up on the vine man from behind. It took me two turns to make it all the way, and when I got there the GM told me I couldn't perform a sneak attack, because a vine man has no vital organs, so there's no advantage to flanking him. Hmf.
The vine man was *really* hard to kill. He could regenerate, so it took a series of really lucky rolls to deal enough damage to even slow him down - none of which were rolled by me, because I was unconscious and dying from my vine-man injuries. Heh. Once we had him on the floor, the Fire and Light cleric torched him so he wouldn't come back.
We pried the Staff of Narvin from the hole in the hearth. It was encrusted with rubies and featured a pair of magically fluttering golden spirit wings. We decided the wizard in the group was most in need of a staff, so she got to keep it. (The fire guy got the breastplate. Is there never anything in that black bag for the gnoooooome?) Later, after being magically healed of my mortal wounds, I would make a point of cozying up to the wizard on our way to our next destination, so as to ask whether she thought the staff might not function equally well with somewhat fewer rubies. The GM laughed at me. 'There aren't *that* many rubies,' he pointed out. 'Only about a dozen.'
'That's more than enough,' I assured him. The stairs of the inn were rotted through (I fell through to the broom closet), so I had some of the others throw me to the upstairs landing so I could loot up there, too. I found an abandoned chest. The boys were worried that it might contain a cat that would be neither alive nor dead until the chest were opened. I was kind of hoping they were right - so long as the cat were alive - because Shroedinger's Cat would make an *awesome* pet. But it was just some coins and a vial of acid, which I pocketed because, hey, I have a lot of pockets and it might come in handy.
Next, we marched to the tallest tree in the forest. Shockingly, we all forgot to make herring jokes. We had to fight a giant beetle in order to get a degraded magic scroll down from a high branch. We ended up using wizard telepathy to bring down the scroll, but prior to that my best plan was to use the beetle's hooky feet as grapples to aid in climbing. (I still don't understand why you always take a penalty for improvising, if the improvisation seems like it would seriously *work.* Which, I stubbornly maintain, climbing with hooky feet probably would). With the acquisition of the scroll, we came to the last of the uncontested items on our list, so I scouted ahead in the woods as we walked to the fourth location. Sure enough, we came upon our four rivals - a ranger, a wizard, a goblin (dunno job), and an elven cleric devoted to an evil deity. I crept back to the others of my party and recommended silently surrounding them. As is to be expected, the paladin and the sober cleric refused, insisting they would confront the competing party openly and offer them mercy and cooperation. My character was minorly annoyed, seeing as it's not as if I planned for us to surround and *massacre* them. I just wanted to make them think twice about messing with us and confront them from a position of advantage and strength. (Plus, uh, sneak-attackery). But three people hiding in the bushes is more advantageous than no people hiding in the bushes, so I tried to count my blessings. Negotiations predictably went south. (It would be more fun, I think, if NPCs had more complex motivations, but these guys' intentions pretty much amounted to 'kill you and take your stuff').
We were extremely lucky, we later learned, in our choices during this confrontation. Our opponents out-classed us, but we somehow took them out in exactly the right order, so that none of their big guns had a chance to act before we neutralized them. I, uh, killed the wizard right out with my sneak attack - and felt bad about it, too. I knew I'd knocked him unconscious, but I didn't know he was dead until it was all over. I guess I am gonna have to kill lots of other people and things in this game, too, huh? There's really not an option, as far as I can tell, to sneak the point of your rapier to a fellow's throat and simply hold him at bay...
The only one of their party left alive was the ranger, and the boys tied him up and left him to work himself free after we'd gone. We learned from the ranger that the rival party had succeeded in finding the wand, but they'd been defeated at the site of the Vial of Pure Water, leaving one last item for us to acquire on our next meeting, before handing them all over to the sheriff and the quack. (The latter of whom will probably turn out to be evil and use the five items to form a Zord or a Gundam Suit and trample all over the countryside. Or something).
Now here's the funny part: at this point the GM informed us that we'd done the module all out of order, so that we had to really bite and scrap during our earliest battles but will be ridiculously over-powered (having leveled up starting next session) for the remainder of its challenges. Apparently, you're supposed to want to chase after the enemy team and decimate them a little at a time. Then you go looking for the scroll in the beetle tree. The inn is supposed to be the site of the final confrontation, where you come in on the opposing team removing the staff from its hiding place in the floor, only to be attacked by the vine man. Which results in a huge free-for-all, during which the vine man is attacking everybody, the two teams are attacking each other, and the goblin is using the fire wand to throw bursts of flame at everybody including his own teammates. But we went to the inn first, so we had no help with the vine monster at all, but also no other opponents. Which may be why there was a certain empty feeling of dangling expectation over the place.
Well, acquiring the vial should still be an interesting time. The Ranger reported that one of their teammates was bewitched at the site of the Vial of Pure Water and turned against the rest of them, which is why they were provisionally defeated. We'll have to see if that trap is still in place.
Till next time...!
.