springading.com

Jim is starting a new series on his blog called “Spotlight on Valt,” where he details the different countries in his D&D world.  I know I, for one, will be reading it.  He’s got a very realistic political background unfolding while Natalia and Iema are off adventuring, so it would be good for me to know.  (And for other gamers to use.)

Also, the contest is still going on at Dakka Dakka.  For anyone who is a member of that forum, vote for Jim!  His army is called the Tombstone Sentinels.

I guess I should post something in here other than “Homebrewed” posts, particularly because 1) the last two posts have been “Homebrewed” posts, and 2) I plan on posting another one tomorrow.  That’s the key word, by the way: plan.  As we all know, I plan for lots of things.  Doesn’t mean much.

However, I’m not so good at the wedding-planning.  Jim and I did decide on a date, though:  April 30th, 2011.  It was kinda random.  We were driving to get some lunch, and I just suddenly flipped open my checkbook and said, “Okay, Jim: spring or fall?”

I thought for sure he would say fall, since it’s his favorite season (hold the Spring jokes, please!) and, being a guy, I thought he’d want to push it off as long as possible.  Silly me.  Jim is not the typical guy.  He really wants to get married sooner rather than later, and he was very specific about the time frame, picking either April or May.  He knows I don’t want to do the typical “June bride” thing.

Funny thing: It turns out that although we hadn’t discussed it before, we both had been thinking April 30th in the back of our minds.  WEIRD.  What are the chances of that happening?  (Yeah, yeah, one out of 365.  I know.  Smart ass.)

So we have a date, and today, Jim gave me a ring.  We’ll have to have it resized.  We actually took a peek at wedding bands for the first time online today.  Jim likes the silver-looking ones better than the gold ones, so we’ve agreed to price them, and if we find some we like, we’ll just get the setting on my engagement ring changed to something that somewhat matches.

And…yeah, that’s as far as we’ve gotten on that subject.  Every once in a while, I try to look at dresses online but…well…I hate clothes.  And dresses.  And I get bored and go do something else.

You know how there are some women that you suspect might be only getting married for the actual wedding?  Yeah, I am not one of those women.  This all just sounds like work.  I can’t understand why we can’t just get hitched in someone’s backyard, eat Boca Burgers (meat for the carnivores), and eat Hostess Cupcakes instead. 

(Well, Spring, that would be because Hostess Cupcakes have beef fat in them, which we don’t eat.)

(Good point, Spring.  You know-it-all bitch.)

Okay, then!  Other stuff.  Um.  This weekend was busy.  When I wasn’t being bitchy, that is.  And I really was.  Even I was like WTF?  What happened to me?  But when I wasn’t being a total jerk, I was cooking.  The menu for the weekend?  Chocolate chips cookies and homemade macaroni and cheese.  Proof of the process:

It’s a little blurry, and no, I didn’t take pictures of the final product.  The only reason why I have this is because I became bored and remembered that I had a digital camera, and that, you know, I really should use it sometime.  Which is how I also got the following picture:

I have to admit, I mostly made the cookies because I was such a brat this weekend, Jim deserved an apology.  Did I have some of this “apology”?  Damn straight I did!  I cannot tell a lie: I make some pretty good cookies.

In other news, Jim got into a contest over at Dakka Dakka.  (I guess it’s limited to only so many people.)  But he got in, and I got some pictures of him working on his Space Marine logo thingamabob.  I got pictures of that as well, like this one:

Muhahaha!  Look at me, I’m totally getting use out of my digital camera.  I’m pretty sure that Jim’s gonna kill me for putting that up.

Oh, and speaking of contests, I apparently won the Hearthstone soap contest over at Chronic Geek.  WOOT.  And I didn’t even mean to, I just wanted to tell my creepy-weird-funny Warcraft story.  But next time, I’m gonna smell good while telling it.

Er, okay, I gotta go.  Jim wants me to get off the computer.  He actually wants to–gasp!–hang out with me.  Who’da thunk?

Back with another rushed “Homebrewed,” although I’ll try not to rush it as much as the last one.  In the last game, we wrapped up our time at the mage fair, discovered that Iema and Corin are total arrow magnets, and had a cleric pretty much threaten to call DCFS on us for parading Corin in the forest in the first place.  But we gave her the age-old response, which is HE WAS ASKIN’ FOR IT, BITCH.  Now all we need are the wife-beaters.  Don’t believe any of this?  Beat on part 17, which you can find here.

Briezen the 11^th

Before we start the game, I realize that I need to update my spell list.  I’m horrible about my spell list.  I forget about updating my spells with new ones, and before you know it, I’m heading into the fire plane with nothing but fire spells on my list.  D’oh!

It’s all well and good because, as it turns out, Jim has some Iema-specific plans in mind.  So while I’m updating my spell list and consulting the Players Handbook, I’m also scribbling notes while I listen to Jim and Phil roleplay.  Here’s what I caught:

It’s the morning of Briezen the 11th, and we’re all at the inn in Stilldale.    Iema wakes up to someone knocking on the door.  He answers and has to look down to see the visitor, which is a halfling with a shock of bright red hair.  He introduces himself as Rendel and invites Iema downstairs for breakfast.

I can totally see Natalia snarling at this guy, I’m thinking as I’m jotting down the notes.  It’s a good thing she hangs out by herself in the woods because nobody would want to hang out with her anyway.

Iema is much friendlier and more curious than Natalia, though, so he follows Rendel downstairs and sits down to breakfast.  At this point, Rendel starts kissing Iema’s ass, big-time.  You know, how he’s a big admirer of Iema’s, how he’s heard of him and his great feats, and gosh, he hopes Iema’s heard of him before because it would be such an honor–

And then Iema calls him on it.  You know, the ass-kissing.

Rendel drops all pretenses.  “Okay, you got me,” he says.  “I was hoping you would do me a favor.  I want to you to talk to the graveyard guardian here.”

“Why?” Iema asks.

Rendel then launches into a rather long explanation, but here it is in a nutshell:  He’s trying to find an artifact that was last seen on a monk that passed through Stilldale 150 years ago.  He’s hoping the graveyard guardian, having the ability to “speak” for the dead people in his territory, can give him information about the monk, or, at the very least, set him on the path to follow the monk.

“But I screwed up,” Rendel says.  “I wanted him to talk to me, so I told him I was friends with more known people around here, like Natalia and Roan.  Turns out, he really hate those guys.”

Out of character, I’m still scribbling away, and now I’m rolling my eyes.  If you’ve forgotten, the new graveyard guardian was one of the conscripts that was killed in the 8th game.  He holds a grudge against me–er, Natalia–and Roan for his death during our battle with Mushroostopheles.  So what if he puked his guts out?  Big baby.

Iema, of course, doesn’t know any of this.  All he knows is that this sounds interesting, so he agrees to go on Rendel’s behalf.

So while Natalia’s snoring away upstairs in the inn, Iema and Corin go off to have their own little adventure.  Even though they’re newcomers to the town, they don’t have any trouble locating Stilldale’s graveyard.  They also have no trouble finding the graveyard guardian.

Iema goes straight to the guardian, Corin following closely behind.  Iema introduces himself and asks about the monk.  But because the guardian still has that whole, uh, innards-in-mouth problem, he has a bit of speech impediment now in his afterlife, so he’s difficult to understand.  It takes a few tries before Iema gets it: If he wants the guardian’s help, Iema has to agree to kill someone and bury them in the cemetary.  Iema doesn’t hesitate to agree to this; after all, there’s lot of dead bodies in our line of work.

Note that I just thought WOW, I WISH I COULD SAY THAT ABOUT MY JOB IN REAL LIFE!  And now I think I want to be a mortician.  But I digress.  Moving on.

The guardian says that 150 years ago, there was a man in black robes.  Presumably, that’s the monk.  Anyway, the monk challenge the miller (don’t ask me who these people are or their importance, I’ve NO idea), they fought and then the monk headed south.  After the guardian wraps up the story, he then demands that Iema kill Roan.  Iema hesitates before wisely not commiting himself, only saying, “If the time and opportunity presents itself.”

The guardian doesn’t question it, though, and Iema takes Corin and heads back to the inn.  He finds Rendel and gives what information he managed to get out of the graveyard guardian.  Rendel leaves; Iema waits for Natalia to wake up to tell her about his morning.

Out of character, my spell list is done, so it’s time to hop in character.  I tell Jim that Natalia wakes up, goes downstairs, and meets Iema.  There, Iema gets Natalia caught up with his conversation with the graveyard guardian.

“By the way, why does he hate you and Roan so much?”  Iema asks.

Natalia rolls his eyes.  “He died while we were fighting Mushroostopheles.  He thinks we could have saved him, but we couldn’t.  There wasn’t a damned thing we could do to help him.  I actually think the guardian is the one whose neck Roan snapped, trying to put him out of his misery.”

“Oh,” Iema says, understanding.  “I guess I can see where he’s mad.”

“Yeah,” Natalia agrees, “it was bad–he puked up his guts.  He’s wrong, but it’s understandable.”  She shrugs.  Can’t win them all.

“Well,” Iema says, “I there was a little bit of a catch to talking to the guardian:  He wants me to kill and bury someone in the graveyard as the price.”

“That’s easy enough.”

“But I’m worried that, uh, I’ll be fighting Beta off, with his need to bury the dead and all.”

Natalia and Iema look over at Beta, who, of course, is with Natalia, because he’s pretty much everywhere she goes.  “Beta,” Natalia says.  “Do you think you can hold off burying a body long enough to get one in the graveyard?  And not give Iema or Corin problems with it?”

Beta grunts at first.  He does a lot of that.  But then he answers.  “Yes.”

Like I said, the wolf doesn’t talk much.

Iema has another idea.  Rendel is after an artifact that, he says, is some kind of glove.  I believe it’s call the Coat of Arms.  He suggests that we head off the halfling and try to beat him to the artifact ourselves.  Natalia had been wanting to check on her treehouse since we got cut off last time, but she gives him.  She figures if something happened to her treehouse, it’s done, so there’s no rush.  Meanwhile, heading off the halfling to get this artifact requires that we get moving.

And so we head out.  There was one encounter that made me a little nervous:  While we’re out, we hear thundering hooves.  Iema and Natalia hiss to Corin and Beta to go hide.  As they do, a group of people pass by, about thirty of them, all on white horses and carrying white shields.  I wonder whose side they’re on as they pass.

We travel a ways before resting.  On the night of the 11th, Iema’s keeping most of the watch while we sleep.  Because of that nifty ring of his, Iema only needs two hours of sleep a night.  Damn, I envy that bard.

But not for long, because while Natalia is sleeping, Jim says that Iema looks through the fire and realizes that large feline eyes are peering at him through the fire.  As his eyesight adjusts, Iema discovers the largest sphinx he’s ever seen is keeping him company.

Phil-the-player seems a little panicky.  I’m pretty sure Iema-the-character is, too, but he plays it cool, asking the sphinx politely how to keep it from eating him.  The sphinx makes an obvious deal:  Riddles.  They trade riddles, and if Iema does well, he can live.

Secretly, I’m glad that Phil is the one getting the riddles, not me.  I’m terrible with riddles, mostly because I’ve heard very few in my life and don’t really have the patience to think about them.  Jim, however, is great at riddles, and from what I gather, so is Phil.  Which, Jim will tell me later, long after the game is over, is why he saves the sphinx for Phil.

The problem, though, is that Phil and Jim know most of the same riddles, being friends for well over a decade.  So most of the exchange is Jim and Phil trying to think of riddles the other hasn’t encountered.  Finally, Jim stumps Phil.  Uh, I mean, the sphinx stumps Iema.  And right when the sphinx is getting all gleamy-eyed, Jim says that Iema, Corin, and the sphinx hear the most horrible screeching in the distance.  Jim describes it as the most horrible sound they’ve ever heard, like something between a cat in heat and a woman screaming.

The sphinx glowers at Iema.  “You got lucky,” he says, and he takes off towards the sound.

As it turns out, some of the little tricks that Corin has picked up is ventriloquism!  Corin threw his voice, making it sound like a female sphinx’s mating call in a distance.  And, since I guess female sphinxes are kinda rare, our sphinx felt pretty pressured to answer it.

Iema and Corin don’t wait for the thing to come back.  Quickly, they wake Natalia, snuff out the fire, and we move camp.

Briezen the 12^th

By Briezen the 12th, we finally make it far enough south of Stilldale to make it to a town I have never heard of, Kalphur.  “Have I ever been here before?” I ask Jim.

“No,” Jim laughs at me, “you marched right up to the town, then turned around and went back.”

And then I remember: When Raelan and Natalia were going back and forth on the road, looking for clues about who was attacking people on the roads. Oh.  You’d think we would have noticed the town, heh.

Anyway, Jim gives us a little description about this town.  It’s right in the foothills of the Caldron mountains.  My Spidey sense starts tingling.  The Caldron mountains…aren’t these the ones big-assed giants live in and all sorts of nasty things? 

Actually, I’m probaby wrong, confusing them with some other mountains or something else entirely.  Someone should step on my Spidey sense.

Jim continues.  The town, he says, has four roads going through it, north, south, east, and west.

“Like a crossroads?”  Phil asks.

Jim nods.  “Exactly.”

“Well, now that we’re here,” Iema says, “that halfling gave me a great idea.”  He suggests we go look for Kalphur’s graveyard guardian.  Natalia agrees, and the four of us make a beeline for the town’s cemetary.  Which, incidentally, is even nicer than the one in Stilldale.  Except, that, you know, looking around, you can quickly discover it’s also a communal execution site.

Speaking of, there’s a man hanging in the gallow.  Ieam, not squeamish in the least (probably especially when there’s an artifact to be had, haha), marches right up to the hanging man and asks if he’s the graveyard guardian.  As luck would have it, he is.

The man takes the rope off, and his head immediately rolls around.  We hear bones cracking.  Natalia cringes and hangs back.  She and I have already learned that it’s best to let Iema do the talking.

Iema ignores the man’s condition and instead asks about the monk.  The man, though, only asks questions himself:  Why?  What?  Why what?  Why who?  Iema goes in circles trying to figure out how to “break” this man’s code, to get him to speak, but neither of us can figure out the trick.  The man finally sighs and gives up.  He puts the noose back around his neck and, um, returns to hanging.  Yeah, if that’s not an indicator that a conversation hasn’t gone well, I don’t know what is.

We head into town, find a bar.  Iema gets drinks, asks the bartender if he has any idea how to get that graveyard guardian to talk.

“Hell if I know,” the bartender says, “but I’ll tell you something.  Criminals that are hanged next to him…he rubs on them and kisses them while they die.”

Holy shit, that’s all kinds of disburbing.

The bartender keeps talking to Iema.  He tells Iema that he’s heard that the Northern Numbraran armies have been coming through.  Natalia remembers the soliders in white that we passed, and she sends Julium a warning message via her dragonhead clasp.  She’s not sure if who they had seen was the Northern Numbrarans or if they were coming to collect the bounty on Julium’s head, but she wasn’t taking chances, either.

As soon as Natalia sends the message to Julium, Jim tells me that Natalia receives a message from Grugor on her clasp.  Myconids under attack by elves and paladins.  Advise.

Aw, shit.  Natalia rushes up to Iema, telling him the message, telling him that we need to go back–fast.

Briezen the 13^th

Because Natalia’s dragonhead clasp will only allow her to sent one message a day, she has to wait until Briezen the 13th before replying to Grugor.  We head out, and she sends one to him, telling him that we’re on our way back to help defend the myconids.  I feel oddly irritated by this whole situation.  Who would attack little mushroom guys?!  EVIL PEOPLE, THAT’S WHO.  We keep going back toward Natalia’s treehouse, rolling for encounters along our way.  One of the encounters is where we run into a man who tells us that there are Caldram foreigners in Stilldale.  Huh.  Weird.  We press on until we get to Stilldale with no real problems.

Here, Jim says we need to rest for the night.  Sensing my unease at the idea, Jim says we could also do something called force march.  I had never heard of this, so they explained it to me:  It’s where you need to rest, but you need to keep going anyway.  You have to roll for checks, but if you fail, you take subdual damage.  And I was all like hey!  I remember subdual damage!  I’m all bad ass now!  But, of course, I forgot where the box was to mark that on my sheet, so Phil had to tell me.   D’oh!

Incidentally, I needed to know where the box was because, yeah…I didn’t make my checks or saves or whatever.  I was all “subdualled,” haha.

We get to my treehouse.  The myconids are there and, yes, they’ve been under attack, although they no longer are.  They tell us that they were attacked by men and elves, and that Grugor is at Raelan’s, battling over there.  Currently, in the main myconid cave, there are attacks.  We force march our way to the cave.

We hear the battle before we even get there.  At the cave, we find a group of elves with armo of bones and shells pulling the palisade from the mouth of their cave.  Behind it, the myconids were ready for battle.  Those are some tough mother-fungi.  SHIT JUST GOT REAL, MOFOS.

We rolls for initiatives, and I pray I get to go first.  I’m all huffy about someone attacking my myconids.  Luckily, my prayers have been answered (I guess Natalia should thank her god, Lolmoro, heh) and I get to go first.  I jump in first thing with an Ice Storm to five rangers on the right and three barbarians carrying great swords, causing 19 points of damage.  Not the best Ice Storm can do, but it’s not too bad, either, I guess.

Beta charges in and kills one of the great sword guys right off the bat.  Sadly, because we’ve caused so much commotion, the rangers start right in on us, and the barbarians rush us.  Jim says when we see them running towards us, we discover that they’re elves with painted faces and bones rattling in their hair.  He says we’ve never seen elves go psychotic like this, and we have to make will saves.  Natalia makes both of hers, but Beta fails.  Four of the elves end up on Beta, and they all hit, bringing my poor wolf down from 99 hit points to–I kid you not–three.  In one round. 

At this point, Corin, who is invisible, does another voice-throwing trick, mimicing the sound of something that sounds like a screech owl.  Jim says that the thing Corin is imitating is associated with Silduggis and is, and I quote, “evil as fuck.”

The myconids are up next.  They finally come out of their cave, but only to try to pull their fallen wall back up.

With all the chaos about, when it comes Natalia’s turn, I’m debating what to do.  I was thinking of casting Entangle to do a little crowd control.  Phil suggested that it might be time to bring out the brown bear.  So Natalia transforms into a bear, while Beta attacks another barbarian.  Iema casts improved invisibility on himself; luckily, the readied actions the archers to stop his spellcasting fail.  Meanwhile, a little further away, the barbarians drop Beta, bringing him down to -10 hit points.  Once her pup is down, they turn to Natalia and bring her from a shit ton of hit points down the 49.

This is when I realize that turning into a bear at this point in the game was a bad, bad move.  But it’s too late now.  Beta is now dead.  Iema tries his best to help Natalia, casting Cure Serious Wounds on her, but more arrows fly and bury themselves into Natalia.  Natalia dies, reverting back to her human form as she collapses onto the ground. 

Now it’s just Iema and Corin.  Iema, understandably, is nervous.  Luckily, both he and Corin are still invisible.  The myconids aren’t really helping out here, and they’re also not having much luck putting their wall back up.  Corin attacks the best we can, and we see–well, Iema sees, since Natalia is dead–a bad guy stagger forward.  Iema jumps in with a song to inspire courage and takes down another barbarian. 

It’s not like anyone can see where Iema and Corin are, so the rangers decide to turn their arrows on the myconids.  Iema and Corin keep at it, Iema stabbing one, and Corin finishing off another.  Suddenly, they hear a loud BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!  They both turn to see a gigantic mushroom guy running down toward them.  At first, they’re like oh shit because they aren’t for sure which side the Big Shroom was on–until he starts to body slam the elves.  WOOT.

Now the bad guys are turning their attention on the big fella.  They try to attack, but Big Shroom moves lightning fast, garroting one ranger with his own bow and stabbing the other in the eye with the same bow.  (Jim’s very descriptive with the details, as you can tell, lol.)  Relieved that Big Shroom appears to be on their side, Iema takes out yet another elf, and Big Shroom stomps through another one’s chest.   There are three elves left–and now they’re running.

Big Shroom throws a rock at them.  They’re gone.

Now it’s just Iema, Corin, the regular-sized myconids, and Big Shroom.  Iema and Corin make themselves visible to Big Shroom.  Iema realizes that myconids talk telepathically–and he needs to talk to Big Shroom.

“Corin,” he says, “if this doesn’t work…sing songs about me.”  And Iema takes off his ring of mind shielding.

Immediately, Big Shroom “spoofs” sports onto Iema so they can talk.  He demands to know where Iema is from.  He also wants to know who sent the elves.  While Iema can answer the first question, he cannot answer the second.  Big Shroom informs Iema that the psycho elves are called Hakal elves, who live deep in the wilderness and hate society.

Everyone suspects that Vueliss is behind this.  Iema agrees to help Big Shroom go after Vueliss and that he’ll get Natalia resurrected.  The problem is that Iema doesn’t know how he’s going to get her back to town.  Big Shroom says he’ll take care of the wolf, but “spoofs” an image to Iema of himself, back when he was a smaller myconid, yelling at Gurgor and Natalia while she was putting things in the portable hole inside her cloak.

“Oh, she has a portable hole,” Iema says, realizing why Big Shroom is conveying that image.  He walks over to Natalia’s corpse, rummages through her cloak, pulls out the portable hole, and dumps her body in it.  “Sorry, Natalia!”   Iema realizes that Big Shroom is gonna do some sort of undead thing to Beta and decides it’s best to let Natalia take care of him herself, once she’s alive again.  He dumps Beta in the hole with her.

Iema and Corin start heading back to Stilldale.   While rolling, Phil gets one encounter.  Jim says they hear clopping sounds.  Turns out to be white armored paladins donned in symbols of Lolmoro.  Lolmoro, incidentally, is Natalia’s god.  They stop briefly to talk to Phil and Corin.  A man named Sir Dauphis tells Iema and Corin that there’s much more afoot in the forest beside the Spruce Circle and that they should stay away from the woods.  Gee, thanks.

When the bard and his apprentice make it to Stilldale, they notice that there’s smoke coming from the small town.  They go into town, make a beeline for the temple, which now has doors battered in and houses injured people.  Iema looks around, but he doesn’t see Roan anywhere.

Iema doesn’t have a lot of healing spells left, but he uses what he has to help the clerics that are there heal people up.  One thankful cleric tells Iema that Roan went to Devies to tell Julium what had happened to Stilldale.  The cleric then (thankfully!) resurrects Natalia.  And, oh joy, I get to roll on the Shit Went Wrong table.  I roll.  Jim looks it up.  He then tells me that when Natalia comes back, she comes back withdrawn, selfish, and possessive.  He says I’ve got the withdrawn down–that’s pretty much me anyway–but that I would have to work on the selfish and possessive aspects of the roleplaying.  (I have a tendency to just let people take loot.)

After Natalia’s back up and running, a little more chatting reveals that the Cadram envoys, the ones that Julium is trying to work with, have been kidnapped.  Natalia half-listens while Reincarnating Beta.  When I roll to see what he comes back as, he comes back as a human man.  He’s completely naked.  And no, Beta is not interested in being a man, thank you very much.  However, polymorphing him into a human is something Natalia can’t do, so we agree that we’ll have to find a wizard to polymorph him.  However, for tonight, he will be a naked man.

“I guess we should go to bed,” Natalia says.  Then she pauses.  “Except, uh, Beta…I’m thinking tonight, you shouldn’t sleep with me.  Being a naked guy and all.”

So we sleep apart.  During the night, we notice that Beta thrashes around in his sleep.  And that’s how we find out what he rolled on the Shit Went Wrong table: He now requires more sleep.

Guess it could be worse.

Briezen the 14^th

This morning, Iema has an idea to find Rendel, since we don’t have Raelan around to polymorph Beta.  We hunt the halfling down.  It isn’t too hard to convince him to change Beta back to a wolf.

Once we’re done with that, Natalia sends Julium a clasp-message that we’re coming to Devies.  Turns out, I wasted my once-a-day message on the dragon clasp, as Julium shows up in Stilldale about 10 minutes later.  We meet up with him.  He says that things are going badly.  There are attacks from both the Circle and Northern Numbrar.  Northern Numbrar managed to bypass the cities and invaded Kugai, a very sturdy, well-defended hobgoblin fortress.  Also, Vueliss has issued an ultimatum that if every building is not dismantled and all the people gone very soon, the druids will start a war.

GRRRRR.  Talk about giving druids a bad name.

Julium also worries aloud to us that the kidnapped envoys will look like Julium was in on the scheme and his alliance with Cadram will be destroyed.  We all agree that the paladins and Vueliss cannot be working together–Vueliss is very definitely evil and a paladin wouldn’t work with him–and that Vueliss is the bigger threat right now.  And then for the agreement that Natalia has been looking foward to FOREVER:  We make plans to meet over at Raelan’s, and then head over for a little showdown with the Spruce Circle. 

Before we do so, we also make sure the the myconids are on board.  Big Shroom is definitely in, stating they’ll meet us on the Circle territory.  Before we leave, they stop us, giving us little mushroom puff balls that act like potions: one for protection from the elements, one of lesser restoration, and one that removes blindness/deafness.

We thank them for their generosity, then head over to Raelan’s, prepared for war.

DA DA DUM.  And the battle continues…in the next game.

Welcome to the 17th installment of “Homebrewed,” brought to you by exhaustion and Coke.  And not the illegal kind, either, although I suspect it would do something about my exhaustion.  At any rate, probably not a good combination, and certainly not as good as Cthulhu like the last game, but there you have it.  In this game, Iema, Natalia, Raelan, and Corin are still at the mage fair, which is quickly coming to a close.  Which is fine.  I think we’ve seen enough mystical carnies for a lifetime.  If you have no clue what I’m talking about, you can check out the last “Homebrewed” here.

 Briezen the 5^th

Okay, peeps.  Since I have to crunch out two “Homebrewed” in a very short period of time, we’re going to play a little game.  It’ll be called how much Homebrewed can Spring pump out super-duper fast?  Except it won’t be fun and it won’t be resembling a porn title like that name I just came up with.

So!  Without further ado:

It’s the final day of the mage fair.  I announce to Jim that I want to Awaken Beta.  I’d explain it to you, but I’m pumpin’, people!  Hence, the link, click it if you’re interested.  Long story short:   Beta now has human-like sentience.  Couple that with the warbeast template Jim used to “upgrade” Beta, he’s much more beefed up.  Jim says to tell you all that it adds 2 hit dice, +3 strength, +3 con, and trains him to accept a rider. 

However, this spell requires me to stare at my panting doggie in the dirt all day.  So that’s how Natalia spends her last day at the mage fair.  Which means that the last day at the mage fair saw way more action from Iema and Corin than Natalia.  Let us commence:

This is a story about a man and his boy…

Er.  Let’s not do that.  It sounds very, um…”ancient Greek,” yes?

This is a story about a bard and his apprentice…

You see how I “justify their love”?  Hahaha!  KIDDING.  KIDDING.  Okay, seriously.  PUMPING.  While Natalia is getting a faceful of dog-breath, Iema and Corin go to the admin tent to tell Jovos that the druid-killers are gone.    However, Jovos isn’t there.  Lasiter tells Iema and Corin that Jovos left in a hurry, only advising that Jovos thought it best not to stick around.  He then gives a lumpy black metal with some windy pieces sticking out of it to Iema as payment, tells Iema to do whatever he wants with it.  Lasiter isn’t in the mood for pleasantries; he’s also rushed.  Iema does detect magic, and by the third round of it, Jim says it shuts down.  Iema feels like his eyes are getting sucked out, like the object literally absorbed his detect magic spell.  Corin checks it out and announces that it’s fever iron, which is immune to magic.  Fever iron, he says, is adamantite that is hit by lightning.  There’s quite a bit of is in Corin’s homeland, the Jade Islands.

Iema decides he wants to show Raelan and Uliver his new prize.  He and Corin head back to Uliver’s.  Jim says there’s some sort of invisible shield in front of the door, so he can’t get in.  Which, Iema is about to find out, is lucky.  He calls for Raelan’s help, and as soon as Raelan sees him with the metal lump, he shrieks, “ARE YOU CRAZY?  GET THAT OUT OF HERE!”   He takes his staff and pushes Iema further back from the door.

And that’s how Iema and Corin find out that not only is fever iron immune to magic, but the larger the piece, the more unpredictable it is.  This one is large enough to undo Uliver’s PORTABLE MANSION (always in caps, remember?) and kill all of them.  Good thing they have the invisible shield, eh?

Iema explains where he got the fever iron and remarks that Jovos left in a hurry.

“That’s it!  Everyone get out!”  Uliver panicks, waving people out the door.  “If someone like Jovos was nervous enough to rush out of here, there’s no way I’m sticking around.”  As soon as everyone is shoved out of the door, Uliver teleports the hell out of there.

(Chicken.)

Iema wants to know more about the fever iron, and since Corin mentioned that there were lots in the Jade Islands, Iema decides that a wizard from the Jade Islands would be the best bet.  He meanders around the fair until he finds one.  When he asks her for her assistance, she seems suspcious at first.  She asks if he’s a “dine,” which I guess is a Shotenese noble. (Sidenote:  Jim describes the country of Shoten is being very Japanese-like in nature.)  Iema admits that he isn’t, that he didn’t always see eye-to-eye with his people and chose the bardic life instead.  He asks for information on the metal; or, if she would like, she can purchase it from him.  The Jade Islander wizard then talks to Corin in their native tongue.  Corin pulls out that nice dagger we bought him a couple games ago.  She turns to Iema.  “You know this is not an artifact, right?  It’s just a magical weapon.”

Iema did not know.  Neither did I.  Hell, in this part of the game, Phil and Jim had to explain to me what an artifact was in the D&D world.  Because I didn’t know already, I couldn’t share in Phil’s disappointment because I always thought it was just a nice dagger in the first place.  See, ignorance really is bliss!

The wizard goes back to talking to Corin in Jade Islander again.  Corin then turns to Iema and explains that since Iema came to her to buy the iron, he must want the sale more, and so she thinks Iema should offer her something.  Personally, while I was listening to this and taking notes, and I was thinking 1) what a money-grubbing bitch, and 2) she would totally be my mom’s idol, hehe.  (Not, uh, that my mom’s a bitch because she’s seriously the sweetest woman on the planet, but she IS the coupon queen.)  Anyway, Iema agrees to give her information on Shoten.  It’s not like there’s any love lost between him and his country, anyway, from the sounds of things.

Something that I noticed Iema is very good at:  People will demand information from him, and he’ll freely give it, but whether they mean to or not, they always end up giving him information, too.  I guess that comes with being a bard.  And I don’t think this woman intended to give him information, but she did.  She started talking about the Jade Islander legend of the Green Keel, which (she says), is not a myth.  The Green Keel is a boat that (again, she says) is alive.  She says it can do things that other boats cannot.  Example:  Long ago, giants sailed out of Fasset along the Nubraran coast and to Jade Islands.  Only the Green Keel was larger than any of their boats.  Turns out the giants weren’t completely stupid; upon seeing the Green Keel, they turns tail and left.  The Green Keel followed them, headed them off.  Eventually, the giants lost the Green Keel.  Or so they thought–when they finally arrived at their own ports, the Green Keel was waiting for them.  It sank every one of their vessels.

I was impressed listening to Jim-as-the-lady-wizard tell this story.  Now that is shit legends are made of.  That also explains why the Jade Islands are considered the masters of the sea in this world.

After they’re done swapping stories, Iema asks the wizard for her name.  She only introduces herself as the Gray Lady.  She leaves.

“Corin,” Iema says, looking a little embarrassed (or I imagine he does anyway, heh), “just so you know…it turns out that dagger isn’t an artifact.”

As it turns out, Corin already knows.  Hell, he probably figured it out before we did.  After all, he’s a smart kid–WAY smarter than Natalia.

Back in my dirt-patch on the night of the 5th, Natalia’s spell is complete.  I finally talk to Beta, aloud, like a human, for the first time.  Guess what?  He doesn’t have much to say.  

Briezen the 6^th-9^th

By the 6th, the fair is over, and Raelan chooses to go hang out with his wizard-friends at some bar rather than go with Iema, Natalia, and Corin.  I imagine he’s gotta rub robed-elbows or something to get ahead in the world.  Whatever–we’re leaving, but to make things go a little faster, Natalia turns into a horse so Iema can ride her (keep your dirty thoughts to yourself) and Corin hops on Beta.

In a day or so, we reach Derrikol again.  No encounters.  We keep going.  The second day is also uneventful.  We keep on truckin’.  Finally, Phil rolls a 12 on a D12, which means we’ve got an encounter, folks.  And a nasty one at that.

We don’t have have time to size up the enemy; we’re straight into combat as an arrow flies through the air and pins Iema’s arm to his side.  He falls off Natalia-the-horse and lands on the ground.  Another arrow sails through the air and hits Corin.  He slides off Beta and is also knocked out.  Natalia looks over to see who has attacked us.  She recognizes it as a forest giant, about 18 feet tall.  ZOMG.

Immediately, Natalia summons a dire lion, who charges the giant while Natalia shifts back.  Beta also lunches in, bets, and tries to trip the giant.  She just shakes him off, turning instead toward the dire lion, and killing it.

Damn.  DAMN.  Just like that, huh?

The giant then announces that this land belongs to the Spruce Circle.  Natalia shapeshifts back into her human form.  “I am part of the Spruce Circle!”  she spits out.  “Ask them!”

The giant eyes her warily.  “Then what is the leader’s name?”

In real life, this took scrambling on mine and Phil’s parts to try to remember his name.  Jim, by the way, was not going to help us on this.  After much swearing up and down to Jim that he would TOTALLY NOT GET LAID IF I DIE IN THIS COMBAT, I remember:  “Vueliss.”

Satisified with that answer, the giant says that she can leave but Corin and Iema can’t.  Then, deciding that would be too merciful, she changes it to Natalia can live but she has to kill Iema and Corin.  And, in typical Natalia-fashion, she refuses the giant flatout–and resumes combat.  Between Natalia and Beta, we get some bites in as well as a Poison and eventually bring the giant down.  Corin and Iema wake up.  While Natalia heals herself and Beta up, Iema collects the loot.  Turns out the giant has lots of loot.  I’d tell ya about it, but I don’t record the loot.  You’d have to ask Phil.

Now, the giant also had some interesting stuff on her that I did make note of:  Elven bread and leaf rations, furthering evidence that the Spruce Circle is, indeed, behind attacks on travellers in the forest.  Natalia explains to Iema what happened while he and Corin were out.  Corin seems quickly grasp how pissed Vueliss is going to be if he finds out we just killed his giant.

“Gee,” he jokes nervously, “it’s too bad she fell on her own club.”

We all laugh but quickly agree we need to get rid of the corpse.  Beta attempts to bury her, but she’s too big.  Finally, Beta suggests that we burn her.  We set up a funeral pyre and leave the scene as quickly as we can.

Brizen the 10^th

We finally get to Devies.  When we get there, the gates are closed.  The guards demand our names.  I’m not doing well with names today, and I try to remember the little nickname that the townspeople of Stilldale gave me.  Finally, I remember, and Natalia says, “Natalia the Stillwitch.”  Wincing while she says it, incidentally.

With that, they let us in  but quickly close the gates behind us.  As soon as we’re in, Beta dumps Corin on the ground.  Just because he accepts riders now doesn’t mean he likes it.

“Hey,” Natalia scolds him, “could you at least give Corin a little warning next time before dumping him like that?”

Beta grunts in response.

Around us, there are lots of people walking around in armor.  A guard approaches us, telling us that he’s been instructed to bring us into the hall.  We go with him.  The City Hall has changed since Natalia last saw it, as now it is covered in scorch marks.  We go inside to a room with a circular table and a map of the world.  Sitting at the table is Julium.

Awesome.  Just the person we wanted to see.

This is Iema’s first time meeting Julium.  He seems impressed.  Behind Julium is Allista, peering at Iema strangely.  She tilts her head.  It dawns on me at thsi point–and probably Phil, too–that Allista, the ultimate mind-reader, is probably wondering what’s keeping her from reading Iema’s mind.  (Remember his ring of mind-shielding?)  Of course, we’re also probably reminded of this because Jim suddenly asks Phil which hand Iema is wearing the ring on.  (Answer: right hand.)

At this point, Jerth, Julium’s cohort, steps forward and introduces himself, shaking Iema’s hand.  Suddenly, Jim has Phil run some sort of check, one that I didn’t catch.  I guess Phil failed it because he feels a rummaging inside his brain.  Apparently, Corin feels it, too.  “What the heck is THAT?” he says, shaking his head.

Jerth politely returns Iema’s ring to him.  Apparently, he had swiped the ring of Iema’s finger during the introductions.  “Sorry about that,” he says to Iema, “but we have to be careful.”

“They’re clean,” Allista announces.

Once it’s been verified to Julium that Iema and Corin aren’t traitors or out to get him, the gossip begins.  We tell him about the mage fair, Raelan’s presentations and their potentials, how he has potential allies in the Palm Circle, how we met a Lady Harod of the Guild of Scholars, who told us he was wanted–

“She’s dead,” Julium says.  “She was found rended outside on the gates.”

Oh.  Poor lady.  Even if I was suspicious of her wanting to get Julium, she seemed all right otherwise.

Julium continues that he needs to take care of Vueliss.  Julium is trying to deal with Cadram and bury a very old hatchet with them in order to proceed with his plans, but Vueliss’s attacks are making it difficult.  He wants to send Natalia in to talk to him.  She sincerely hopes by “talking” to Vueliss, Julium actually means skinning that evil elf Willow-style.  (Er, Buffy reference, if you didn’t catch it.  Sorry.  Just know that it’s gross and evil and he’ll be very, very dead.)

Before she forgets, Natalia sends  a message to Raelan via her clasp, letting him know to be careful in the woods.  Something that makes me infinitely more nervous:  The druids want everyone outside the Spurce Circle dead, which would include wizards.  Raelan’s tower is protected from being found by everyone but druids.  Ugh.  That’s a nightmare waiting to happen.

We decide to go to bed, as it’s in the wee hours of Briezen the 10th (I think) that we get into town, so we wake up on the actual morning-morning of Briezen the 10th the next day.  The first thing Natalia does is cast Greater Magic Fang on Beta.  I want to check out my treehouse to see how it’s holding up.  Iema agrees to go with.  On our way to the treehouse, we get an encounter. 

Jim says we hear arrows flying.  This scenario is eerily familiar.  But it’s worse:  This time, an arrow goes right through Corin’s temple, killing him instantly.  Iema soon after finds himself stuffed with two arrows himself.

Ahead of us, we find 13 people.  There’s a bunch assembled, 4 men across, 3 lines deep.  Behind them, there’s a sergeant or something of sorts.  They’re all human and in uniform.

The sergeant yells, “Surrender!”

“On whose authority?” Iema yells back, hopping of Natalia-the-horse.

Sensing that I’m being ignore because they think I’m an actual horse, I tell Jim and that Natalia is going to wander off into some bushes, shapeshift back, and wait to see if she’s needed for spells or anything.  Before she wanders off, she signals to Beta to stay with Iema.

The sergeant yells back that his name is Sgt. Oshwin.  Ever the diplomat, Iema asks if he can talk to Sgt. Oshwin personally to discuss our terms of surrender.

Suddenly, we hear footsteps of someone running wildly towards the scene.   Then we hear then screaming.  Then we see a tall, gangly orc with tattoos on his face jump in from behind and start going ballistic.

“It’s Grugor!” I say excitedly.  Grugor is defintely, by far, my favorite.  We haven’t had in our game in what seems like AGES, so I’m glad to see him back. 

Grugor jumps in on the sergeant and gets hit hard.  Iema quickly dives into battle by casting hast and improved invisibility.  Natalia, from the bushes, casts Ice Storm.  Which, by the way, is a lovely spells, causes lots of damage to lots of people–I highly recommend it for some awesome SLAUGHTER.

Another arrow comes from nowhere, but this time, it’s not on Team Evil–it actually is aimed for the sergeant’s neck.  It hits.  Blood pours out of his mouth and he keels over.  We quickly look around, but we have no idea who aided us. 

Not that we had much time to find out.  There is, after all, twelve other people to contend with.  Beta gets some bites and trips in.  Natalia is still at her secret spot, doing Flame Strike now.  Iema, invisible at this point, dodges the bad guys and gets Grugor back up and running.  One of the baddies tries to run away, but the moron gives Beta an attack of opportunity, which Beta took, killing the guy swiftly.  Good pup!

More soliders try to run away.  Iema casts haste on Grugor.  We think the idea of a hasted, raging half-orc barbarian is hilarlious.  Iema also heals Grugor up.  He’s doing way more healing in this battle than Natalia is, that’s for sure.  Speaking of, Natalia is now casting Entangle because the rest of the soliders are starting to flee.  Sadly, Grugor is the only one who fails his reflex save and thus the only one who actually gets entangled.  Beta runs toward the men and also gets entangled.

SIGH.

Still, though, Beta at least manages to get another guy nearby and kill him.  Meanwhile, Natalia casts another Entangle.  (Yes, I love Entangle so much that I usually keep about 3 on my spell list at all times.)  This time, the Entangle catches the remaining guy.  Iema sneaks up behind the remaining guy and, as Phil says, does “sticky sticky” with his weapon. 

Beta finally gets out of breaks out of his Entanglement and Natalia dispels Grugor’s.  (It took a little bit for me to remember that I could do that.)  Grugor doesn’t waste time.  He rushes towards the remaining baddie, lifts Beta out of the way (no small feat, considering that my wolf is the size of a horse), and finishes the last guy off.

The poor Grugor collapses to the gorund, panting.  Between me and Iema, we get the half-orc healed up.  We loot.  One of the objects is a signet ring, identifying the sergeant as the fourth son of…someone.  I don’t remember.  I’m sure Jim will remind me in the notes.

Speaking of Oshwin, when we check him and the mystery arrow out, which, incidentally, is still sticking out of him, we see that it’s causing his veins to turn black.  Creepy.  And ew. 

Finally, a moment for pleasantries.  “Hi, Grugor!”  Natalia says.

He waves.  “Hi, Natalia!”

Okay, moment over.  “Do you know where this arrow came from?” Iema asks.

“No,” Grugor says, “but I see dem before.  Never archer, though.”

We see no signs of the mysteriously helpful killer about, but we decide not to waste time looking, either.  The treehouse is going to have to wait.  Natalia turns into a horse, carrying Iema and the dead Corin back to town.  Grugor rids Beta.  At first, Beta looks grumpy about it, but Grugor whispers something to him, and suddenly, Beta goes racing off.  Later, Grugor will explain to Natalia that orcs are good with wolves or something to that extent.

Hm.  Wonder if Natalia should be jealous, ha.  The newly-awakened Beta seems to have taken more quickly to Grugor than Natalia, in some ways.

Instead of going to Devies, this time, we head to Stilldale, where we know Roan is.  We get there with no problems.  When we do get there and find her, she sees Corin, and the presses upon us the dangers of bringing kids on our adventures.

Iema is almost apologetic.  “I know,” he says.  “But the boy insists on coming with us.  It’s what he wants.”

“Besides,” Natlaia adds, “he’s at the age where he can decide for himself.”  Note, by the way, the SPRING does not believe that thirteen year olds can decide SQUAT for themselves.  But Jim had once explained to me that thirteen was considered an adult where Corin is from; therefore, Natalia feels it’s perfectly within reason to treat Corin as such.

Roan resurrects Corin.  He gets up, confused.  Then he walks around stiffly.

“Oh, no,” I groan, “Corin’s a zombie!”

Thankfully, I’m just stupid: After rolling on the Shit Gone Bad table, Corin just gets -2 to initiative.  Way better than a zombie.

While Corin is trying to unstiffen himself (not an uncommon dilemma for a 13 year old boy, I’m told, haha), Roan tells us that Stilldale hasn’t had any vistors recently.  We tell her the sitaution in the woods, how we were attacked by the forest giant on behalf of the Spruce Circle, and how we were ambushed while trying to get to my treehouse.  Suddenly, it makes sense to Roan why Stilldale hasn’t had visitors.  Personally, I’m starting to think it’s better if it doesn’t.

And here concludes the 17th game of “Homebrewed,” rushed, yes, but hey, I’m DONE WITH THE PUMPIN’.  Another dilemma Corin could relate to, I’m sure.

Well, I was going to work on “Homebrewed” yesterday, and I had a big chunk out of #17, which was two game sessions ago now.  So I pulled up the draft, about to try to put a dent in it, and guess what?  WordPress ate my freakin’ post!  I’m wondering if this is going to be the end of the “Homebrewed” series; I’m going to be pulling overtime every day this week, and I very highly doubt that I’m going to have the energy to come home and cook, clean up, be a fabulous girlfriend–er, fiancée–to Jim (it’s still a little weird to say), and spend hours working on “Homebrewed.”  I’ll try, but like I said: I think this might be the end of them.  They do suck up a lot of time.

In other news, Jim picked up Firefly this weekend, and we’re already almost done with it.  It took me a bit to get used to the western-meet-space feel, but now I like it.  Although our conversation about the space-meets-west didn’t go so well when I told Jim that gee, this reminds me of Cowboy Beebop.  And then Jim got offended, haha.

Well, here I am, pushing it to the last minute again, and now I REALLY have to rush to get in for overtime.  Later, peeps.