Yesterday

The Saturday group was pretty small yesterday (9/11/04), but we sure had a good game. It was just me, Roddy, Shane and Chaun, but Chaun wasn't there for the whole 12-6 session. We played upstairs at the kitchen table, and there was plenty of soda, chips and popcorn to go around with just the four of us. I ran Khadgar, Cedric and Kazalonian (Sorcerer, Druid, Cleric, all 20th level) and Gilgar (P.'s old 20th level dwarven fighter) through a short adventure involving the resurrection of Hurkendorn, a powerful enchanter bent on controlling Aarde through sheer charm, Geas, etc. Hurkendorn had managed to manipulate all the world leaders (including Lhevix, the city set up by the old characters in retirement) into signing trade treaties with his city state, Pavalos, along with military non-attack agreements. But the party learned of Hurkendorn's evil intentions. By 2:00 (and about half a round of combat) Khadgar had hit him with a Meteor Storm and Gilgar hit him on 4 out of 7 attacks, each at 1d8 + 17 damage. Cedric and Kazalonian didn't have to do anything, and Hurkendorn never had a chance, even though he was a high level character in his own right. It was fun to use characters from the old campaign, I'll have to do it again more regularly. It's nice that my new 3.5 DMG has Epic rules in it.

After that, we played in the newer, low-level campaign. My new villian is a powerful transmuter named Jaramon (the mad). Revan (Roddy's 4th level paladin) along with Shane's ranger and my NPCs (two fighters and a bard) rallied small armies of 80 lizardfolk and 80 dwarves to liberate a half-orc city from Jaramon's 200 mongrelmen, who had occupied it. Units of lizardfolk included 20 cavalry on giant lizards, 20 shortbow archers, 20 spearmen and 20 with hand weapons. The dwarves included a unit of 50 miners, and a special unit of 30 engineers with seige weapons such as catapault, balistae, battering rams, etc. Shane's ranger, Flegal, scouted ahead for the armies, and located the barracks building. The miners dug a trench in front of the seige weapons, and most of the units hid in it, while Revan joined the cavalry unit, who took cover behind a hillside. Once the seige weapons opened fire, small groups of mongrelmen poured out of the city gates to attack them, unaware of the units hidden in the trench, who overwhelmed them. After picking off mongrelmen from the city wall, the dwarven and lizardmen forces were able to liberate the half-orc city with only about 10% losses. The party then accompanied a small force to deal with a floating island with strange obelisks on it in the middle of the freshwater lake (the city's water supply, which was turning people into mongrelmen). The island was a giant floating eye, and the four obelisks were like eyelids, and the water, obelisks and eye somehow had the power to disfigure anyone who came near or failed a Fortitude save. People had the ears of cats, the "hand" of an elk, wood for hair, stone scales for skin, and one lizardman's buttocks was changed to that of a ferret. One dwarf's nose was changed into that of an elephant. There were a lot of changes, but eventually a lizardwoman shaman powerful enough to return everyone to normal was found, though it was a painful and lengthy process, and the stone scales are still grafted to Flegal's skin (reducing his charisma by 2 and raising his AC by 4). Everybody gained a level, treasure and magic were pretty good. It was a fun session, and next time I will try to remember to use the theatre-style popcorn maker with butter popcorn oil. :)

Remember, Magic booster draft tournament at 10 a.m.-4 p.m. next Saturday 9/18 at Old Town Hobby, 3 boosters and a day of fun for $10, not bad! It will be the last in a series of 3 booster draft tournaments, we'll pick up some more tournaments in the future.