Tum te tum something something ELEISON

Listening to some recently uploaded Latin chants on my iPod, and out comes one of the chants  we've been singing at St. John's. Hee.

Liberation

As of yesterday, I am FREE of six years of orthodontist appointments! I've still got my retainers (rassum frassum), but I only need to wear 'em a few nights a week now. Speaking of which, why are they still in my mouth? *removes*

The Nerd Days of Christmas

On the first day of Christmas my DM gave to me

His luckiest d20

On the second day of Christmas my DM gave to me

Two scrolls of wish

And his luckiest d20

On the third day of Christmas my DM gave to me

Three dragon dens

Two scrolls of wish

And his luckiest d20

On the fourth day of Christmas my DM gave to me

Four power words

Three dragon dens

Two scrolls of wish

And his luckiest d20

On the fifth day of Christmas my DM gave to me

Five epic rings

Four power words

Three dragon dens

Two scrolls of wish

And his luckiest d20

On the sixth day of Christmas my DM gave to me

Six swords of slaying

Five epic rings

Four power words

Three dragon dens

Two scrolls of wish

And his luckiest d20

On the seventh day of Christmas my DM gave to me

Seven rogues a-sneaking

Six swords of slaying

Five epic rings

Four power words

Three dragon dens

Two scrolls of wish

And his luckiest d20

On the eighth day of Christmas my DM gave to me

Eight dwarves a-drinking

Seven rogues a-sneaking

Six swords of slaying

Five epic rings

Four power words

Three dragon dens

Two scrolls of wish

And his luckiest d20

On the ninth day of Christmas my DM gave to me

Nine wizards casting

Eight dwarves a-drinking

Seven rogues a-sneaking

Six swords of slaying

Five epic rings

Four power words

Three dragon dens

Two scrolls of wish

And his luckiest d20

On the tenth day of Christmas my DM gave to me

Ten monks a-leaping

Nine wizards casting

Eight dwarves a-drinking

Seven rogues a-sneaking

Six swords of slaying

Five epic rings

Four power words

Three dragon dens

Two scrolls of wish

And his luckiest d20

On the eleventh day of Christmas my DM gave to me

Eleven bards a-buffing

Ten monks a-leaping

Nine wizards casting

Eight dwarves a-drinking

Seven rogues a-sneaking

Six swords of slaying

Five epic rings

Four power words

Three dragon dens

Two scrolls of wish

And his luckiest d20

On the twelfth day of Christmas my DM gave to me

Twelve druids shaping

Eleven bards a-buffing

Ten monks a-leaping

Nine wizards casting

Eight dwarves a-drinking

Seven rogues a-sneaking

Six swords of slaying

Five epic rings

Four power words

Three dragon dens

Two scrolls of wish

And his luckiest d20

I am now a Johnny in spirit.

Because I'm actually excited about the math homework: we were only assigned one proposition to look over (Prop 20 of Book 9), but I noticed from the description that it is Euclid's proof of infinite primes. Now that we're getting to work with actual numbers, I was hoping we'd get around to that prop.

And it's uphill both ways!

The snow returned some days ago, but it has been going all day today. I was wading ankle-deep on my way back from seminar just now. I'm a Californian! Water is not supposed to do this!

You lose! Good day, sir!

Audition for The Learned Ladies: Get cast in one of the two smallest roles.

Audition for Little Shop of Horrors: Don't get cast.

Send in resume for Romeo & Juliet: Don't get an audition.

Audition for A Streetcar Named Desire: Don't get cast.

This is not my semester.

Season Finale

This was the last meeting of the airship campaign until January, and WOW was it big.

I'll post a more comprehensive rundown after I get some sleep, but here are a few sound bites.

Lots of epic background music, courtesy of my laptop.

Interrogation and release of Gerrard, lucky resurrection of the dead from before.

20,000 gold riding on a three-way drinking contest between me, Meteledes, and the captain. We all passed out and the bartender swiped the pot.

Investigation of an ancient elven library with obscene defense and authorization systems.

Encountering a band of elves who helped us repair the ship (taking about a month).

Zerin being forced to, due to Vateo's deterioration, strike a deal with Missinget's drow-pantheon patron.

Me cutting off Gerrard's arm (it was regenerated) to stop him from being sucked into a Pillar of Vile Darkness.

Obelix and Koslov putting so much work into pretending to be high-ranking elves that they're probably developing alternate personalities.

And then...

Let me see if I can do this justice.

When we were still in the process of interrogating Gerrard about his actions last session, aleistair noticed that his luck has taken a significant downturn: doors would smack his head when he left a room, books would slip out of his hands, when he landed in the ship he would clip hismself on the railings, the deck would splinter terribly under his feet, and so forth. Trying to frigure out the cause of all of this, he turned to Zerin, Missinget (the two of them to figure out if Vateo were targeting him personally for some reason), and me (as I worship the god of luck) for answers. I can't recreate it, but the verbal smackdown Missinget laid on Aleistair was one of the most hilarious and applause-inspiring things I've heard in a long time.

While in the library, we discovered that Sethos had entrusted something to a bank on the main island. We went to the island and infiltrated the (long-abandoned) bank. We were unable to bypass security and open Sethos' vault, which meant that it would be necessary to break in through an adjoining wall. While we worked (with the help of our elven hosts) on repairing the ship, Gerrard and the artificers spent the month draining off the magical wards and burrowing through the wall. 

Near the end, Aleistair spotted a blue-clad elf monitoring us from the trees. He (with no small help from some elven archers) subdued the elf and brought him in for questioning. This elf was of a band that had apparently terrorized our elven hosts for centuries, striking out of nowhere and vanishing. We began the questioning process, but all we got was, "You're making a terrible--" before another elf lost composure and killed the captive.

On the last day, Gerrard and the artificers finally broke into the vault of Sethos. The others descended (I was topside running drills with the Marines), and retrieved a black, highly magical orb matching the description of the orbs keeping the trans-planar block in place. As the party retrieved their prize, they heard a shout of, "MURDERERS!" from upstairs. They dashed back up the stair to where the artificers had stayed, preparing for battle on the way.

When the party reached the landing, they found the artificers dead of broken necks and me locked in combat with twenty to thirty of our elven hosts...whose faces were now cut and mutilated in the same manner as the elves who had ambushed us in the previous session. When we engaged, three of the elves' disguises flaked off, revealing them to be the three hostile Aleistairs created by the Mirror of Opposition. The battle that followed was the most over-the-top I have ever seen in a D&D session. I showed of the full potential of my fighting style, repaying every swing at me with two far more lethal strokes, and Koslov killed around a dozen enemies by turningh is familiar into an elder dragon and dropping it on them, but the finishing sequence was a true demonstration of just how powerful high-level characters really are. Zerin and Missinget crushed all of our remaining adversaries between two tsunamis, Obelix sent chain lightning down the entire line of foes, who were still trapped between the now-electrified tsunamis, and Aleistair, who had used a scroll to grow to seventy feet in height, unleashed a flaming whirlwind strike that explosively wiped out everybody still standing.

As this battle died down, we heard more sounds of conflict coming from the just-repaired ships (Gerrard still had his own). We all jumped onto the back of Koslov's familiar, still in dragon form, to get there as quickly as possible. On the way, Zerin cast a set of extremely powerful enhancement spells on me, rendering me nigh-unstoppable. When we arrived, the ships were beset by all manner of airborne enemies, and thousands more swarmed toward them on the ground. I threw Zerin aboard, ordered all marines not on the ship to get out, and jumped off the dragon to face the hordes. Aleistair and Koslov followed, and immediately afterward an airborne spellcaster stole the familiar's draconic form. The horde promptly fired a sun-blotting quantity of arrows at the three of us, but between Aleistair's unmatched agility, Koslov's golem-like body, and my wall of wards, it was to no avail.

Round 1: I lept into the horde and rolled my first critical hit of the campaign, utterly destroying the elf-velociraptor hybrid in front of me, and carved a ten-foot swath in all directions with counterattacks to the others. Koslov pulled a very devious stunt, casting a polymorph spell on himself, which another spellcaster in the horde intercepted...turning into a gigantic bacg of gunpowder and metal shards. Aleistair wasted no time in flinging several flasks of alchemist's fire, causing an explosion that wiped out some thousand more enemies. Everyone on the ships so far either turned their ballistae on the dragon (severely damaging it) or labored furiously to get the engines up and running.

Round 2: I stepped in front of Koslov to shield him and held position, continuing to channel Sauron in the Fellowship of the Ring prologue scene. Captain Dariel ordered Koslov and Aleistair back to the main ship to aid it. They retreated. Koslov catapulted one of the many enemy corpses at me in an attempt to send me flying shipward as well (my buffs did not include flight), but at this point I was about as easy to knock about as a monolith. The crew continued to fight off the airborne assault while trying to get the ships flying.

Seeing this, I charged back to the ship, grabbed the hull, and heaved. Thanks to Zerin, my strength had been boosted to such a level that this effort propelled the ship into the air and well away from our foes. At the same time, the crew finally managed to get the engines back online. As they sailed away, the party saw me completely swarmed by our enemies. Shortly thereafter, the last of Zerin's enhancements made itself clear: when my greatest protective spell expired, with me following suit shortly, the death throes triggered. The resulting explosion vaporized everything within it, permanently altering the island's geography. Some seconds later, Aleistair just barely dodged out of the way as my smoking pick thudded into the deck.

We now have have the first of the orbs required to lift the planar barrier and save Vateo.

Ka-boom!

The airship campaign finally had another meeting tonight.

We reached a rather large group of islands today, and a scouting group (the party plus ten marines) were sent onto one of the larger islands. Koslov stayed behind, as he was putting the finishing touches on a new, golem-like body for himself. As soon as we headed inland we encountered a score of elf-raised dogs. They were rather growly around Zerin (demon heritage, even though he's good-aligned) and Lady Missinget (drow upbringing, and her alignment is less clear), but they were jumping all over half-elf Obelix. We found a kennel and a nearby long-abandoned house. A quick sweep of the house turned up some magical hound-training equipment and an elven skeleton holding a small vial. I surmised suicide by poison.

Venturing further inland, we found a massive, ancient tower of marble and mithril. There was a door outline at the base of the tower which proved quite resistant to unwanted entry (no, "Mellon" did not work). Obelix impersonated an elven officer to the door, which rendered it transparent, but still firmly shut. I, however, found that my helmet of blinking was now effective on it (the helmet allows me to, among other things, walk through walls). Inside was a staircase leading up to a similar wall-door at the second floor. I couldn't bluff this one on my own, but the rest of the party and the marines followed into the tower as soon as Zerin used a miracle to provide everyone with a similar blink effect. When he did so, his arms became withered and blighted, although nothing some healing spells from Missinget couldn't fix. This appeared to be a result of Vateo's condition deteriorating. Upon reaching the higher-up floors, we found two things. The first was a control panel of sorts, with some panels providing magnified views of the surrounding region and others activating a defense mechanism: the mithril winding about the tower animated, uncurled, and whipped around very destructively until we turned it off. The second object of note was a floating, silver orb in the center of the room. Gerrard's reaction? "Ooh! I touch it!" My reaction! "NO!" I tripped him and dragged him back just before he reached it. When we attempted it analyze it, it registered overwhelming magic of every type except illusion and necromancy. Yeah. No Touchy.

We then spotted a small, airborne figure approaching rapidly on one of the viewscreens. This was Koslov how inhabiting his new body, but he appeared as a particularly nasty construct, and Obelix (immense construct-hater that he is) went a little berserk and activated the tower defenses, which gave Koslov a nasty pummeling until Missinget laid down a magical field designed to severely punish anyone who took hostile actions within it. Gerrard then re-declared his decision to touch the orb. I accepted the magical consequences and tripped him again, but he directed his psicrystal to the orb anyway. *touch* KA-BOOM! A burst of magical electricity exploded his psicrystal, gave the party nasty wounds, and instantly killed all of the marines. As we picked ourselves up off the floor and healed our burns, I gathered the corpses and declared that we were to return to the ship posthaste. Gerrard displayed a rather...nonchalant attitude toward the deaths of the marines. Upon our return, charred corpses in tow, the captain confronted Obelix, Zerin, and me and asked what happened. I explained, finishing with an urging that Gerrard be arrested for manslaughter. The captain agreed, but we found that Gerrard had taken off to another island in his own ship. As we prepared for the manhunt, Obelix and Koslov reconciled.

We began sweeping the island chain, and as sunset neared, Obelix spotted fresh footprints on one of the smaller islands. Reuniting and taking the scout ship to the island, we disembarked (no marines this time) and began a closer search. After going a few hundred feet, we heard a voice behind us cry, "Look over here!" We turned just in time to see a trio of imps next to the scout ship...touching torches to barrels. KA-BOOM! The ship was blown to smithereens, killing the commander and wizard aboard. WE retreieved the bodies and gave them a funeral pyre. As this happened, elves sprang up from everywhere and began pelting us with arrows. We recognized their garb as that of the Atherton society from 500 years ago.

Missinget took two shots to the chest right away and beat a hasty magical retreat. I performed a leaping charge into the trees and engaged one of the archers, Meteledes attempted to demoralize our attackers (doing rather well, for once), Koslov directed his pet constructs into melee, where they wrought havoc), Obelix engaged enemies in the shallow water just offshore, and Zerin wrought a firestorm to torch the trees and their dwellers (avoiding me). Oh, and Gerrard also appeared in the trees, hurling a blast of cold Obelix's way. We had previously planned to arrest him, reverting to deadly force if necessary, but now there was nobody who intended to do less than kill him.

As the battle unfolded, I smashed the bows of a few archers, which caused their bodies to corrode, Koslov and Zerin focused their efforts on neutralizing Gerrard, who hit me with a not-very-effective fire blast and Zerin with a much-more-effective burst of constricting ectoplasm, and the elves continued firing high-knockback arrows at us. Eventually the elves were decimated, and Gerrard was caught immobile between me and a grapple-happy construct. It was clear all around that, despite displaying an amazing capacity to absorbing punishment, he was moments away from execution. Obelix then showed the flexibility of his class by emulating a powerful dispel effect on Gerrard to get rid of his protections...which also peeled away the magical effect that had been driving him to try to kill us. As this happened, a rather large demon appeared on the field and an unusual adamantine staff appeared in Koslv's hand. We also noticed that commander campion (not the blown-up one) had snuck onto the battlefield...just in time for the demon to impale him on a large spine. Our attention promptly switched from the now-helpless-and-in-massive-pain Gerrard to the demon...and to the late Campion, who has undergone a couple of surprising changes. First, the lower half of his body has degenerated into ice slush. Second, part of his face had slid off to reveal a different face: that of Sethos. Koslov, using the suddenly-appeared staff to trap the demon in a telekinetic sphere, deduced that Campion had, in fact, been a magical creation sent by Sethos this whole time. The demon hissed that the staff's owner (determined to be Sethos again) would want it back and vanished. We then returned to the writhing Gerrard...as the captain stepped forward and executed him with a dagger to the back of the skull.

As the party and captain talked to determine everything that had just happened (during which Sethos' staff vanished), I began piling the corpses. As I dumped Gerrard on the pile he began screaming. Huh. Alive again. Turned out that Gerrard, having crossed the line from Chaotic Neutral to Evil after killing the marines and showing no remorse, had been sent to the Nine Hells in death (not the Abyss, as he had made some very specific enemies among devilkind) before Vateo dragged his soul out of hell and hurled him back to the Material Plane. Apparently it was not a pleasant experience. The captain, feeling that Gerrard had still not paid the price of his actions, took Gerrard's left eye.

When we returned to the ship, we found it in grave disrepair. During our fight the ship had been assaulted by a formidable force of demons, who had been pyrrhically beaten back.

Scoreboard: 10 marines dead, commander Callebe dead, wizard Helliot dead, our scout ship destroyed, our main ship quite battered, Gerrard under arrest, the captain in favor of returning home, and Obelix in possession of an elf-hound puppy. The DM said afterward that we had departed from expectation a lot. Gerrard had not been expected to touch the orb, and we as a whole were expected to reach...some other vents, which will almost certainly happen at tomorrow's--er, today's meeting.

Snippets

Was completely wiped out yesterday. Took the day off to sleep. So nice.

Wanted to give blood today. Couldn't. Grr. I'm feeling my pulse right now, and it's not that high!

More D&D prep was this evening. One of the backup characters for the evil campaign is a vampire lord. Everyone else groaned when I broke out the Castlevania music.

I need to put more ranks into Bluff, and probably Diplomacy. A bit of Sense Motive wouldn't hurt, either.

Copy+Paste gave me some trouble. Had to force-restart the computer 3 times in a row before it would cooperate.

I love Stravinsky.

Did some Christmas shopping today. Need to do more.

Got my chant back today in music class. Apparently it was more of an aria.

Where did this twisty-wire come from?

Spent dinner discussing the implications of a Mobius portal. They are...not pretty.

Should get to sleep soon. Don't want to completely undo Comatose Tuesday.

That wacky Oedipus

You know you need therapy when you have discussion questioning whether infanticide is "the easy way out" or whether the baby can kill you post-mortem. And you come up with a way for it to happen.

...or maybe you are just engrossed in classical literature.

...*in middle of Oedipus discussion with Darling* No, I do need therapy.

SUBJECT CHANGE: Google, when provoked, will turn up over 5 million hits for Vampire Con. Which is stupid. Because vampires don't have Con!

^That is the sort of thing my brain finds funny at this time of night. Truly, I am an incurable geek.

I'll swallow your soul!

The evil campaign had its first session today. The rest of the party was imprisoned on Carceri (and I had been there for several years but only just escaped captivity) for various crimes back on Earth (ranging from killing an orphanage to causing an entire island to die via drug addiction and overdose), but they were otherwise given relative freedom to wander the plane. Their first thought: find a way off! They found one of the long-term inhabitants and press-ganged him into serving as a guide. On the way to one of the few cities around, they noticed a group of mutated, long-legged humanoids approaching from a distance (these were abyssal ghouls, with me following them). The "ranger" fired a pair of arrows at the one with slightly different skin coloration. That was me. Since I wanted to help Mommy (the elf child beguiler), who was in the party, I promptly went into stealth mode, as did the ghouls. We eventually closed on the party, and combat ensued. The warlock's ooze companion killed several ghouls, the beguiler turned another against it companions, I slashed at one of the ghouls rather ineffectively (my powers are only very effective against the living) while screaming, "DON'T HURT MOMMY!", the warlord and druid teamed up to do a lot of smashing and slashing of undead, and the "ranger" used some hideously powered-up arrows to kill the big ghoul instantly.

Aside: I should probably explain my backstory. Eight years ago I was kidnapped by a few of the fiends who live on this plane as a test subject to see how much stress and alteration a mortal's essence could undergo without becomeing something fundamentally different (or dying). These experiments ultimately gave me my soul-eating powers as well as a strong affinity for shadow, but they also gave me massive amounts of brain damage. I escaped from the lab and wandered the plane for some time. Just before the campaign started I saw the others being escorted to prison and, in my insane, brain-damaged state, imprinted to a slavish degree on the elf (hence the whole Mommy thing).

Anyhoo. Battle over. During the fight, the "ranger" had read my thoughts and gotten a good sense of me in general. Sensing that I was not immediately hostile, he took me aside and (we started at a rather high level) cast a spell to heal my insanity and put a circlet on me to counteract the mental retardation. In-character reaction: "Gods below, THANK YOU." Out-of-character reaction: "So much for how I was planning to roleplay him." (Interestingly, due to how I wrote up my backstory I am now the least evil of the party by a significant margin.) The other said they were looking for a way off the plane. I did too (eight year of cross-planar torture is no fun), so I joined them. When we reached the city, we found it totally deserted, with the exception of two people. The first was an old man who in formed us that if were wanted off, the mayor of the city (his employer: he was tasked with watching over the city in general) would be the best person to talk to. The second was the mayor himself, who happened to be a very powerful barbarian. He told us of a wizard who lived on the plane, would be our best bet for getting off-plane, and was not a nice person to deal with at all. Before we left, the elf, wanting a lackey now that my loyalty was skewed toward the "ranger," hit the mayor with a dominate person and used several class abilities to make it even harder to resist. The mayor's save? Natural 20. The elf tried a few more spells but was thwarted by consistently high rolls.

Aside #2. When we had a moment, the "ranger" took me aside and explained a few things: he was not a ranger in the service of Her Elven Majesty, he was a part-doppelganger with a very well-established base on the Astral Plane (in fact, the one in the party was a magical duplicate of him; the real guy was at his base), and he was working to prevent an elder evil called The Not from reaching and devouring our world. I could work with/for him and be compensated nicely, or I could say "no" and remain in the party with a few mental modifications. My response: "How could I refuse?"

Also, the DMs were pleased that we were not all trying to kill each other yet.

On a non-D&D-related note, I just saw Serenity.

Digression

So I'm trying to finish my essay for lab right now, and I wish I didn't have to stay within the scope of the readings, because the one I'm looking over at the moment (specifically, the section on determinism) could lead into a nice, long paper on the implications thereof regarding fate and free will. But that would be too tangential for me to get away with. Back to the embryology.

Yeah, I'm going to hell.

Seminar was interesting tonight. The piece we were discussing was Aristophanes' Clouds, with a focus on humor and what makes something humorous. I took a few stabs through the conversation at why dead baby jokes and similar topics are found funny, including the contrasting examples of a baby breaking its arm (not funny) and a baby getting run over by a train (very funny). Later on, Mr. Franks made a comment about Socrates dying horribly (which he does n the play: he burns to death) and added, "which Mr. [Peter] would probably enjoy." So now I'm the resident sadist, I guess.

Random updates

I just spent the last 12 hours in the great hall watching every Star Wars movie in order, along with several other students. I also proved my trivia-fu in between films, though I failed miserably at remembering Count Dooku's existence for one should-have-been-easy question.

And...I have other things to think about. I'm not sure what to think (as usual), but social aspects of my life may be getting more complicated, and I'm not sure whether that would be a good thing or not.

Not that 1 in the morning is the best time for contemplation. A better time for sleeping, it is.

Issues. Serious issues.

Yes, the evil campaign will be going ahead on weekends that the main campaign is not. We will in theory be working together. The campaign will be starting on the prison plane of Carceri, with everyone but me trying to escape one of the prisons and me trying to break them out (I'll explain why). The party will be as follows:

An orc warlord who massacred an orphanage because he thought it was an army of halflings.

A fey-descended necromancer who is gradually becoming a lich.

A hellfire-wielding warlock.

A 12-year-old elf waif assassin-mage with emphasis on illusions and enchantments, whose player swears he will have us all working for him before long.

An anthropomorphic hawk druid who deals drugs.

A greedy elven ranger/archivist diplomat.

A mutant, brain-damaged, graft-covered barbarian who eats people's souls (that's me).

The reason I won't be starting imprisoned with the rest is that I just broke out of the laboratory where I received the grafts, mutations, and brain damage. The reason I will be trying to help them break out is that I have imprinted on the lolita assassin. So when we all do meet up, that particular character will have a loyal lapdog (unless the others find a way to control me).

The main concern of the players is that this might turn into The [Player #4] Show. If the party  does come to blows, my money is on him to die first.

Beware of psycho swords from beyond the veil.

We had a short meeting last night focusing on the two weeks of downtime before we reach Beluria. Missinget and the other casters spent a few days studying some onyx blocks we had extracted from the titan king's brain. As suspected, they contained memories. The memories focused of the destruction of 90% of the Atherton fleet some 500 years ago, the king's relations with a group of powerful elven spellcasters (whom we recognized as the liches we destroyed, and you can guess how the last memory was cut off), and the king talking with one Sethos. Sethos is an extremely powerful wizard known to the older party members who has not been seen in some centuries and has some rather nasty plans in store involving...I'm getting ahead of myself.

A couple of days after leaving the lich caverns, a screaming comet was spotted crossing the sky. Some time later we spotted a massive stone hand rising out of the ocean, smoke billowing from its palm. Aleistair flew over to investigate while the ship remained at a safe distance, and he discovered the very-unconscious-yet-alive body of Zerin! While ferrying him back to the ship, Zerin's sword demonstrated a mind of its own by making some rather threatening "keep going" motions. That is new. Also, along with Zerin was found an infant griffon, which Missinget found highly adorable.

Once he had come round, Zerin informed us that Vateo (his god) had personally hurled him across the planes back to earth (which hurt. A lot.) for a certain, very important task. Do you rmeember when I talked about the transplanar block? We learned that said block is being caused by a set of magical orbs which Sethos is after, and these orbs are causing Vateo to weaken and, if nothing is done, eventually die, which would have nasty repercussions of its own. Who cares about spellslinging undead, now we have to save the world!

On another note, Koslov's player is thinking of DMing a separate, evil-aligned campaign. I must go find out the details.

On yet another note, I have some things to figure out back in the real world. Various life aspects may be getting complicated again. Maybe not. I'll elaborate when I know more.

Edit: Never mind.

Did he just go crazy and...?

Well. This was a very eventful session.

We retreated to the ship just long enough to re-prepare spells, resurrect Meteledes and Koslov, and form a plan. We then headed back in on a phylactery-raiding mission.

At the first room, it immediately became evident that the liches had also spent their respite preparing for our return. First sign? The room holding the phylactery was sealed off by a wall. Aleistair could recognize it as an illusion, and he is the fastest of us all, so we gave him a couple of extra buffs and sent him to collect the phylactery. The instant he passed through the wall, he saw--and therefore triggered--around fifty hostile warding symbols. A few minutes of rolling saving throws later, he was stunned, drained to zero strength (becoming as floppy as a sock puppet), and rendered permanently insane. "Did he just go crazy and fall asleep?" Oh, and none of us were capable of monitoring him, as the illusionary wall had lead dust suspended in it. After a minute passed and no sign of Aleistair, we had Obeliz sneak his way in. He managed to avoid the symbols, pull a set of tongs out of his utility belt--I mean, cloak--and retrieve the phylactery and helpless, crazy Aleistair. We had brought a vat of magical acid for the specific purpose of destroying these things, and we promptly dumped it in. A contingent fireball went off, but everyone but Meteledes avoided the worst. A telekinetic pulse also went off, but everyone but Meteledes managed to keep their feet. One down, three to go.

As we got back on the Reach (our smaller, scouting airship), a pair of shadow tentacle lunged out of the chasm and grabbed the ship. At the same time, a completely new airship swept into the cavern. Its ballistae blasted off one of the tentacles, and I killed the other. The occupant (singular) of the other airship hailed us and introduced himself as Gerrard. This, by the way, is the new party psion. He explained that he was searching for a titan king, but we convinced him to help us finish off these liches in the meantime. Oh, and we also healed and de-insanitied Aleistair.

It turned out that, while scouting the first room, Obelix found clues to the locations of the other phylacteries (no, he wouldn't tell us how). The next room we searched was a very icy place, with many bodies entombed under our feet. At the far end of the room was a stage with a welcome-mat-type-thing. Gerrard sent his psicrystal to investigate. When it peeked under the rug, it was promptly sucked under. Obelix went to investigate. The rug animated and grabbed him. Combat! Weathering (though not well) a barrage of steel and magic, the rug, grabbed some nearby Loadstones (magic items that weight you down a lot) and Sovereign Glued itself (permanent, unbreakable glue) to Obelix. Koslov turned the rug into a mouse and Meteledes cut the mouse off of Obelix--along with a layer of skin, which Missinget healed. Unfortunately, the Loadstone-covered mouse fell down the hole underneath the rug, making a terrific bang when it hit bottom. "Fool of a Took!" Right on cue, the frozen bodies in the ground animated and grabbed the casters. We killed one and wounded several others, and then the dice finally hit us with their worst-placed roll yet: the solar, attempting to melee one of the undead, rolled a Natural 1. With its vorpal sword. Who was withing reach? Meteledes. Yep, our celestial ally, allegedly more powerful than any one of us, decapitated the sergeant, making his third death in two sessions, and his second death caused by an ally. The solar, apparently overwhelmed with shame, used some spell that made it self-destruct. "Did he just go crazy and explode?" This killed off all of the undead and blew a large enough hole in the ice to expose the room below. We found two more phylacteries here and threw them into the acid. One left.

At this time, the one lich who was still alive contacted us magically and basically said, "come and get me," complete with coordinates. We returned to the Reach and spotted the lich at the far end of the complex. In front of the lich rose up...a draconic skull with gems for eyes. All of us thought the same thing: Dracodemilich, a.k.a. Walking Total Party Kill Only It Flies Instead of Walks. I promptly ordered the Reach to flee--no objections were voiced--when Zerin suddenly took off in the direction of the skull and threw up a Wall of Force behind him. Heroic Sacrifice? Yes, but not quite in the manner we expected. It turned out that Zerin had cast a spell that lest him identify the beastie, and it was not a dracodemilich, but an animated dragon skull with gems in the eyes...and stuffed to bursting with explosive powder. One sword thrust to the eye later, the skull exploded, the wall shielded the Reach, and the cleric was utterly obliterated. The DM then called for a group Spot check, and, as if to make up for all the Natural 1s, four of us rolled Natural 20s on that check. Through the smoke we could make out the lich running like hell...until Gerrard rooted him in place with an Ectoplasmic Cocoon. A couple of deadly rays later, the lich was dust. Now to find its phylactery in peace.

Examining the room to which it was running, we found a heavily trepanned, petrified titan, whom Gerrard identified as the king he sought. Searching the expansive room turned up a metric ton of lich loot and a series of rune-covered papers that fit the descriptions of the lich's phylactery. Aleistair cautiously examined the pieces of paper one by one. Next...next...next...you've reached the bottom? Guess what: Mirror of Opposition. A second, third, fourth, and fifth Aleistair appeared and threw up an illusionary-but-very-opaque wall around the five of them. 

Sidebar: This is how a Mirror of Opposition works: if you look in it, the clone/s that emerge will try to kill you. They are duplicates of the poor sap in every way except for intent. If either the original or the clones die, and clones and their equipment vanish. End sidebar.

Examining his sheet for the benefit of how the clones would act, Aleistair saw the he was either resistant or immune to most of what he could do to himself, so the most effective way to get rid of them would be for us to kill him and try to resurrect him later (tough, as he is not native to the plane). Two Aleistairs (one real, one fake) walked into view with weapons sheathed and necks bared. The other three had run off. Missinget cast a spell that disabled both of them. Then we came up with a gorgeous-but-sickening plan: We had Koslov use wish spells to duplicate programmed amnesia (total mental rewrite) on both Aleistairs. When they woke up, neither one was interested in attacking the other any more. Indefinitely Duplicated PC! That complication out of the way, we destroyed the final phylactery (the papers). Examining the titan-turned-statue, all of us agreed that the mutilation its brain had suffered and how long it had spent in this state--450 years, give or take--meant that the best course of action would most likely be a mercy kill. So we dealt such.

Now that we had destroyed evil, it was time for the other half of adventuring: taking its stuff. We ended up carting several magical tomes (mainly of varieties that permanently increased mental ability scores: Koslov and Obelix took the Intelligence books, as Int rules their class abilities, Missinget and Aleistar took the Charisma books, and I took one of the Wisdom books so that my Wisdom could meet actual human standards) and spellbooks, some large magical onyx blocks that I had pulled out of the titan's brain, and a FILTHY RICH FORTUNE in random magical items and components back to the ship. The Atherton society claimed most of it, but we were very generously compensated. On the way out, Koslov left a message for the ghost to read when it rejuvenated, telling it that it lich buddies were kaput and that if it decided to pursue us, we would find a way to make it permanently dead. Afterward, we briefly debated on whether or not to send a ship home to report back our discoveries or to continue onward without delay. We decided on the latter, as next land was two weeks away and that backtracking, due to various factors geographical and political, could set us months behind schedule.

In the aftermath, the duplicate Aleistair made it clear that he would strike out on his own soon (and there are still the three renegades to worry about), we resurrected Meteledes again (which we learned would, due to escalating interference with connections to the afterlife, be the last resurrection we could manage--sorry, cleric!), and the DM let us invest our newly-acquired funds as we pleased, due to the plethora of crafters aboard the ship and the effective two weeks of downtime. Koslov set to creating an adamantine body for himself. Obelix boosted his Intelligence even more and got various other magical enhancements, especially pertaining to mobility and melee (I will take this moment to mention that Aleistair, Obelix, and I, due to the acronym of or real-life names and common competency in melee, are known as the IMP Squad.). I massively (due to having been the one to loot the onyx blocks, I got an extra kickback from our employers) upgraded most of my combat-oriented gear, putting my Strength on par with many giants and making me considerably more agile than anyone in full plate has a right to be. Not sure how the other party members are investing their money yet.

Long story short: Liches are dead for good (but the ghost is not), Meteledes continues to be the tagalong Chew Toy of Fate (but he's sure fun to play), Zerin is dead and not returning any time soon (most likely the DM will find a way to introduce the knight that is his backup character), solar exploded himself after a nasty, brutish, and short life as the other Chew Toy of Fate, Aleistair has one friendly clone aboard the ship (for now) and three homicidal clones of whereabouts unknown, and we all have obscene amounts of loot. We're also approaching the Epic threshold.

...and the dark side.

I may finally be proud to be a American, but I am ashamed to be a Californian. Here's hoping Prop 8 gets repealed in 2010, if not sooner.

Oh, and we had a bit of a snowstorm during music class.

Tonight, history has been made.

Barack Obama is confirmed to have won the 2008 presidential election.

The first black U.S. president in history. And it wasn't even close: an 3,000,000+ margin in the popular vote, and a landslide electoral vote.

An end to the Bush era (as of January 20, at least).

Accompanied by majorities in both the Senate and the House.

I would include some ecstatic or humorous editorial here, but...

Why risk spoiling the moment? Now go out and give the first person you meet a great, big hug.

...ACK! Nearly posted a typo of "bug hug." Doesn't quite have the same effect....

Freedom!

The longest, most vicious assignment of this semester--my seminar essay--is finished, printed, and turned in in duplicate. My topic was The Oresteia, and specifically whether or not the chain of killing and revenge could have been altered to minimize bloodshed. My answer: as a series of events yes, but as a play no.

Anyhoo, I think this track sums up my current mood fairly well. 

Yes, I am aware of the irony that I'm using a piece titled "Cornered!" in a blog post titled "Freedom!"

Quote of the day:

"It's a fucking neuter!"

"Isn't that an oxymoron?"

Apparently I am again becoming recognizable by garb. The odd thing is that this time it's not sweatpants; it's black shirts, with or without writing on them.

Unintentional pun of the day:

"He can have his cake as long as he's willing to be a cobbler."

Now I can't be blamed if the country goes to hell.

I got out and voted this morning. The good news? I voted in a swing state. The bad news? Can't do anything about Prop 8.

The Scientific Method II

"So, Peter, what did you do for Halloween?"

"I performed several abortions and tried to perform several more. You?"

*retouches summer knowledge*

I am grinning. Plans are in motion now. I must memorize, analyze, and generally prepare. I still have a couple of weeks to ready myself, and then things turn interesting. Hopefully this won't screw up my college schedule too much (for the short term at least: if long term conflicts arise, the implications thereof will be enough for me to do whatever I need to to make things work out).

But I can't let myself be totally distracted: I still have a science packet to read.

:D

Welcome to the fold

...Gods below! I just realized I missed the spring play proposal meeting!

Anyhoo, we now have a 7th member of the party, Mishra* the psion. So now we have a third squishy-genius-caster. He's starting out a level behind the rest of us, but that's still enough to manifest 9th-level powers at this point. Clairsentience (divination-like) is his specialty, with some buffs and save-or-lose powers thrown in. Next meeting will be in a week and a half.

*Mishra is his name for the time being, but the DM wants him to come up with a name NOT ripped off from The Brothers' War.

The dice are broken!

My god, where to begin?

Friday's Session: We successfully resurrected the captain before returning to the ruins to check out what the lich wanted. In the gigantic room the lich was to enter were two iron colossi (golems on epic steroids). We found the control amulets to the colossi, but one was broken and we didn't want to risk trying to work the other. The flash of light when the lich died had, however, revealed something much nastier: an (unsure of spelling) Abucai Macabre, an ancient and very evil artifact-warship crewed by Demon Hearts and capable of taking down entire fleets of airships. This one however, has been disabled long ago by an airship that had been lucky enough to get in a crippling ramming attack with its mithril prow. Those in the party knowledgeable about such things insisted that we destroy it entirely. So we infiltrated it (not too hard, as the Demon Hearts appeared nonfunctional) until we reached the doors surrounding the core. The first one was heavily warded, but there was a stone tube leading through the wall which proved rather easy to destroy. Koslov (our wizard) sent another one of his constructs to pick the lock on the extremely heavily-warded inner door, and it was promptly fried by electricity (this happens a lot with hi constructs, which are growing more and more fearful of assignments). Obelix (our factotum--a skill-oriented do-anything type) managed to disarm the traps and open the door (dodging one last trap with a backflip that, due to being underwater, was in enforced slow motion) to the core of the ship. We placed a delayed shatter bomb on the elemental cores and beat a hasty retreat. One explosion and massive collapse later, the Abucai was destroyed. I brought the remaining colossus amulet to the captain, and that was destroyed too. We then agreed to his request to finish scouring the region of this undead plague.

Today's Session Prelude: The DM had informed me that we would be making greater use of our crew and that I, as their commanding officer, may want to stat them (to his guidelines, of course). I have officially become the go-to guy for rules and stat blocks, but I like the statting process. The marines were built to be absolutely vicious with the proper teamwork, and sergeant Meteledes, despite ranking below me, is more competent than I am in every way except killing stuff. Go figure.

Today's Session: Five main sources of necromantic energy were identified. Exploration of the first was rather uneventful. We found four evil-radiating vases in a shipwreck, which were placed in stasis chests, and we recovered a magical, food-spawning cabinet. The second required a trek into snowy mountains, and we brought the marines and Meteledes with us. Partway along, we were attacked by a half-dozen trolls, three of which were unusually large. Between the marines doing their job well and our archivist blasting them with a fire storm, we killed all the trolls without suffering a scratch. farther along, we came to three massive statues, where we were confronted by...a second lich. The lich wasted little time in dispelling the flesh to stone on the statues, revealing them to be three (weakened) titans. Koslov managed to put two of them to sleep immediately, and Aleistair took the fight to the lich, discovering the hard way that it was wearing a retributive amulet (reflecting half of Aleistair's damage). A mix of grappling from Koslovs constructs and his telekinesis and Aleistair's efforts brought the lich down to a more convenient range than atop a titan's head, and he and Obelix destroyed the amulet before resuming full attack on the lich. In the meantime, the marines and I saw signs of latent necrotic bombs in the sleeping titans and dispatched them while Meteledes (played by me) tried to convince the last titan (still recovering) to aid us against the lich. Long story short, we destroyed it without any deaths...except one: Zerin's (our cleric's) griffon. That poor thing was killed by a lich spell, incinerated by a flame strike, animated as a hellfire-covered zombie that attacked and carried Koslov into the air, turned into a live cat by Koslov, incinerated by its own hellfire, turned back into a griffon upon death, and dropped 80 feet to splatter on the ground. The two titans we killed were zombified along with the griffon, but they were easily re-killed. We saved the last titan and got some information about what had happened to it. We also found a similar box as the last one among the lich's remains. This time the commander promptly doused it with holy acid. 

Upon returning to the ship (and leveling up some more), we were informed that the necromantic auras in the region were starting to converge on site #3. Cue the lock and load montage, with lich loot being identified and distributed, and the casters preparing a new round of spells for the upcoming conflict. Archivist Missinget, having access to more and higher-level divine spells than our cleric, blanketed the party in enchantments to protect against and aid in the destruction of legions of undead of all shapes and sizes (as well as some area nukes), Koslov loaded up on various destructive and debilitating spells, and Zerin managed to cast a miracle to summon a solar, the most powerful class of angel there is and theoretically more powerful than any of us by a considerable margin. Once prepared, we flew to the mouth of the cave we were to besiege, the party, marines, and golems loaded into the scout ship (as the main ship couldn't get inside). The welcoming party of some four dozen zombie windghosts was wiped out by the solar's storm of vengeance. Just outside the cave we saw another giant statue (and knew of more inside, as well as the general layout). The solar insisted that all the giants be freed and restored this one. It promptly proved to be an eldritch giant (an evil) kind which blasted the party and crew with a powerful necromantic energy attack. The DM's cackling was cut short, however, when he realized that Missinget's spells absorbed the spell completely. The solar then shot the giant with an arrow of slaying, but it survived. This is where the dice started to break: the crew of the main ship unloaded their ballistas at the giant, and I swear every single attack was either a Natural 1 or a Natural 20. Our own scout ship was shot twice and the giant took three ballista bolts to the head. That killed it. Entering the cave complex proper, we found two more statues. Now wary, we asked the solar to use some divinations, and it determined one of the petrified giants to be evil. The golems smashed it. 

The party and Meteledes the entered the side cave near which the now-smashed giant stood. One of Koslov's iron ants, scouting ahead, uncovered yet another box like the ones we had found on the liches. Koslov put an antimagic field on his ant to suppress its wards, and I used my pick to break apart the box. The instant it was destroyed, four colossal tentacles shot out of an adjacent chasm, two of which grabbed me. Another grabbed Aleistar until he teleported away, and the last one grabbed the solar, which rolled unbelievably badly on its grapple check and was pinned. The party managed to damage the tentacles rather nastily, and Zerin sealed off the chasm with a blade barrier. Unfortunately, the blades barrier started dicing the solar as well as the tentacles. The solar tried to get off a disintegrate on a tentacle, but rolled a Natural 1 and hit Aleistair. Fortunately, Aleistair resisted the worst of it. Once it got to my turn, I finally got to show off what I could do with my pick in this campaign and rolled some berserk totals for attack and damage despite being grappled. Missinget blew apart the tentacle holding me with a destruction, and Koslove rendered the whole beast catatonic with a ray of stupidity. As it slid back into the chasm, Aleistair made it explode with fire...waking up those still below. Cue eight more tentacles shooting out of the chasm, although I managed to intercept and destroy three of them as they emerged, and the blades sliced the others considerably. The tentacles? Grabbed the solar again and dragged him down through the blades. Koslov used a limited wish to retrieve the solar, and when the tentacles pursued they finally shredded themselves against the blades. The solar's reaction? "I hate this world."

Further exploring that particular section of cave, we found a room containing three larger tanks and some cabinets full of alchemical items, which pleased Aleistair. Cue us being attacked by three lightning-throwing brains in jars in the tanks. Koslov proposed filling the room with a fireball and that we clear out. We did so, although Missinget lingered to carry out some of the alchemical containers on Aleistair's request (he didn't have time to do so himself). Cut the three maximized empowered fireball traps going off. Aleistair, being a devil, was immune, and Koslov and Obelix managed to evade the blasts entirely, but Zerin, Missinget, and I took a lot of fire damage, the flasks and whatnot exploded, nearly killing Missinget, the solar was knocked unconscious, and Meteledes botched all of his Reflex saves and was reduced to a neat pile of ash. Seconds later, we learned whether or not the first box we had destroyed was, in fact, the lich's phylactery. The answer: No. The lich, surprisingly, didn't attack immediately, started questioning us about or motives and actions. Not wanting to provoke it, we gave safe answers while Missinget and Zerin surreptitiously healed themselves and the solar. We then learned why the lich was engaging in conversation: it was stalling for its buddies to arrive. Total arrivals: 2 liches and a ghost.

Allistair charged the first lich, discovering yet another retributive amulet. I tried to sunder the amulet and got my pick's enhancements temporarily dispelled. The solar revived Meteledes, Missignet and Koslov used spells to little effect, and Obelix asked the ghost if it was friendly. The ghost responded by waving jauntily and throwing a disintegrate at Lich 1, but rolled a Natural 1 and hit Aleistair, who again saved. Koslov took a critical hit from a disintegrate but was saved by a healing contingency (note: My bad on anticipating our foes. I advised Missinget's player on her spell selection, and I was envisioning that we would be taking on armies of zombies, wraiths, etcetera, not a few liches. Thus, no spells were prepared to stop disintegrates.) Over the next couple of rounds, the ghost vanished, Zerin tried and failed to turn the liches, Koslov tried to hit a lich with an antimagic ray and had it bounce back at him (he resisted it), and he was hit by two more disintegrates. The first one he survived outright. The second one did enough damage to kill him, but half of it was diverted to his primary construct (the one the blew up against the zombie army, now revived), which promptly disintegrated. The solar was wholly worthless, getting knocked out again, and I'm pretty sure we rolled another few Natural 1s in those rounds. Missignet used a miracle duplicating an extremely enhanced holy word, which paralyzed the liches. The one next to Aleistair and me threw up a reflexive cube of force, but we didn't mind being trapped in an enclosed space with a paralyzed creature not known for physical resilience...until both liches switched their bodies with random skeletons and vanished, leaving behind the cube (Aleistair teleported out, but I was stuck until Koslov dispelled it) and a blanket of magical silence. Now, with my character  struck mute and trapped behind an invisible wall, I could not resist the urge to do a mime impression. I got slapped for that.

Now the battle was over...until a ghost-possessed Meteledes blasted Koslov with a fourth disintegrate, finally turning him into a pile of dust (I'm rather surprised that it took this long to lose a PC, considering what we've been fighting). Aleistair attacked Meteledes, as due to Missinget's buffs he could simultaneously attack the ghost. The ghost failed against a disruption effect, and Meteledes suffered a crit: both were promptly killed. The solar revived Meteledes (again), but couldn't revive Koslov. I suppose we will learn why next time. Our characters reboarded the ship and decided to fall back and regroup, although I was strongly in favor of collapsing the whole complex with a miracle-enhanced earthquake. Back in the real world, we nearly killed the DM for hitting an 18th-level party with what was revealed upon interrogation to be a level 29 encounter (the solar was meant to even the odds, and then it ended up rolling so hideously we banned the DM from using his online dice roller). For some perspective, had he been playing the two liches and the ghost to their full lethal potential, they would likely have TPK'd (Total Party Kill) a party capable of taking on creatures likely to TPK us.

Lessons learned today:

1. Prepare spell immunity (disintegrate).
2. Invest in more divinations.
3. Kill first, talk later. 
4. Prepare resistances to all energy types, not just necromantic stuff.
5. Check enemies for amulets and destroy those first.
6. Trust nothing jaunty.
7. Trust nothing, period.

Erm...yikes.

I'm thinking that my character's mental ability scores (high Intelligence, low Wisdom) are a good match for my own.

This session started up right after we destroyed the lich. Being the crusaders for truth and justice that we are, our first thought was, "did it drop any loot?" Checking its remains turned up robes, a staff, a crown, a book (all of them registering as magical), and a mithril, runecarved box. Naturally, we all thought, "phylactery!*" The wizard tried to detect magic (got nothing) and then dispel magic (bounced back on him). At this point I rumbled, Gimli-esque, "well, what are we waiting for?" And had Allistair (the devil) not won initiative and tangled my pick in his rope, I would have indeed taken a swing at it (the DM later told me that I would probably have gotten the Gimli re-enactment in full). Someone else in the party (I forget who) tried opening it, but Allistair kicked the lid shut immediately. Good thing he did, because I (the player, not the character) correctly guessed what was on the inside: a Mirror of Opposition (magic item that creates a murderous clone of you). At this point we decided to take it back to the ship for analysis and destruction. Returning to the water's surface, we found the ship under attack by huge, flying zombie beasties (more of the windghosts we met in the first session). We finished them off (lost a few crew members in the process), and presented the box we suspected to be a phylactery to the captain, who agreed that it was certainly dangerous. The wizard crafted a timed disintegrate bomb, and we took it onto one of the icebergs to set it off. The spell bounced, and the box sprouted legs and started running away. The devil and the wizard quickly recovered it, the devil holding it on the way back. By the time they returned to the ship, Allistair had a bit/lot of a "my precious" mentality about the box. We tried to talk him into letting go of it. He repeatedly refused and tied it to his waist. Here's where my low wisdom kicks in (not counting the Gimli moment, which was intentionally so). I (via a telepathic conference with the officers and the rest of the party) decided that Allistair had to be restrained and the box forcibly removed from him. Cue the wizard hitting him with Otto's Irresistible Dance and the cleric and me trying to grapple him. Not only did we roll horribly, but a couple dozen clones of Allistair suddenly appeared on the deck, mimicking his movements. After a few rounds passed, during which I tried and failed to sunder his rope, the archivist was hit with some voice-wrecking effect, Allistair kept asking what in the Nine Hells was going on, and we had a flood of out-of-character debates about the rules and real-world naval law, we backed off and tried diplomacy again...until the discussion was cut off by one of the clones backhanding the captain overboard. Fatally. They then ordered us all to turn the ship around, head home, leave the box, and leave Allistair. In the ensuing quasi-schizophrenic conversation, Allistair began to warm up to the idea that the box wasn't so nice after all...until his clones possessed him en masse and forced him to flee with the box. The ship's commander and the archivist tagged him with wand blasts, but to little effect. Here's where my intelligence kicks in. I suggested the cleric (remember when I said we had a paladin? He's a cleric now) cast a small miracle to throw an antimagic field around the box. The result? *KA-BOOM* No more box, no more possession. Hopefully, that was the phylactery. The session ended with a very battered devil under arrest and attempts being made to resurrect the captain. The DM said that we had defied his expectations at every turn.

*If the word is foreign to you, it's basically a Horcrux. If you don't read Harry Potter, a phylactery is a lich's key to immortality. If you kill the lich but don't destroy the phylactery, the lich comes back.

Schemes

Our DM has recommended that we each stat a "backup" character in case of current character deaths (which, given the power of the lich we took out, are looking not unlikely). The second wave, as it were, consists of a tank-heavy knight, a rogue about whom we don't know much, as the DM has been helping stat it (this is the backup character of our new-to-the-game archivist), a warlock who uses hellfire for good ends, a paragon-of-virtue monk who excels at punching evil in the face, a doesn't-know-what-yet-but-will-probably-be-a-dragonfire-adept...and me. I have been extremely tight-lipped with the rest of the party about my next character; all they know is that I will be some sort of magic-user. What the DM knows is that I will be playing a binder/ur-priest (basically hanging a sign around my neck that reads, "Burn me as a heretic!") who is not only evil (no, I'm not planning to kill the others), but undead. Fortunately, all my robes are lead-lined (to block divinations), I'm good with disguises (and one of my abilities can make me even better with them), being undead makes me immune to most forms of domination (unless they target undead specifically), and I'm an excellent liar, so I should be able to keep my secrets for some time. In terms of what I bring to the table, I can cast spells both of the healing and painful death varieties (I'm very good at the latter), and my powers as a binder make me insanely versatile. The downside? I'm weak of arm, I'm easy to hit unless I fortify myself with spells, and I have the agility of a cow. It should be a fun character to play once my fighter keels over.

Sick, yet hilarious. Like most things hilarious.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcbazH6aE2g

D'oh! *yawn*

O Fortuna on the alarm clock + forgetting about Daylight Savings Time = bad.

EDIT: Apparently it isn't DST yet; my clock is just sadistic.

Oh...ah!

Interesting developments have come to my attention. Interesting possibilities. I mustn't get my hopes up, but there is definitely work to do. I have people to contact. Information to gather. Probably a headshot to arrange.

Whyyy?

Tonight's session was very eventful. While exploring the underwater laboratories, we found a large group of iron golems, complete with control amulets. Right on cue, we get news from the surface of an impending army of underwater zombies. After a brief scuffle while retreating into the siege vaults, sacrificing the wizard's construct companion to blow up an undead aboleth, and having the iron golems seal the doors to buy us some time, we retreated deeper toward the vaults. I would like to note that I wasn't rolling too well, getting a natural 1 on a pick attack and clipping myself, and doing fairly poorly with some saving throws. After getting some distance, the doors were smashed open and we were surrounded by zombified sharks and their commander: a lich. The lich declared its intent to retrieve something from the vaults and started walking that way, stopping only to respond to an ineffective disintegrate spell with a blast that killed most of the men accompanying us and nearly took out the wizard. After slaughtering the sharks and quickly healing, we determined that risking death to destroy the lich was preferable to letting it get away with...whatever it wanted. Shortly thereafter, a lucky roll from the archivist stunned the lich long enough for our melee specialists to surround it and the wizard to give them all a mass bull's strength spell. At this point, I launched a series of attacks against the lich, each packing about as much damage as could be expected from all but the most dangerous spells in the party's arsenal. I rolled...two Natural Ones in a row. The lich escaped unharmed and I cleaved off nearly a third of my own health. Fortunately, the rest of the party did quite well in the following turn, the devil hitting with every single attack, the paladin smiting evil, and the archivist hitting with a bolt of glory for over 100 damage. The lich blew back the melee-ers, but one more bolt of glory (the archivist's last high-level spell) just barely connected, and the lich was destroyed. Thus ended the session.

The DM, after informing us that he did not expect us to chase the lich or to survive if we did chase it. He also told us all to go up three levels, which means that my character is leveling up three times for hitting himself three times. On the plus side, I did get to massacre some zombie in the first half.

Muahaha!

I just got back from helping to stat our new archivist. Still some work to do, but it was a delicious experience. The DM and I popped in on the other players just to laugh evilly.

Oh, and when Kosov is done enhancing some of my stuff, I will be very scary indeed. At least, as scary as a straight fighter can be in 3rd Edition. Blasted quadratic wizards.

The plot thickens

Today started out as the ranger and paladin getting some help from me in terms of stat-tweaking their characters, and then we shifted back to the actual game. Things were...interesting, to say the least. The paladin brought to the attention of the party news of a possible mole on board. Sharing of backstories turned up nothing suspicious among us. Investigations of the crew turned up suspicions on an ensign whose father opposed the society that sent us on this expedition and the head doctor. After interrogating the ensign to no result, I was struck by a mysterious hunch to search the doctor's room, which turned up evidence that she was a worshipper of a drow goddess. One thing led to another until we had the wizard's spider construct shadowing her and at one point attempting to charm her in preparation for questioning. When the commander got wind of all this, he was...not happy with me, although he wasn't aware of my full involvement (rolled surprisingly well with my Bluff check), and ordered all investigations against the doctor to cease. The wizard was summoned to speak with the captain alone, and when he returned, he brought an unexpected guest: the doctor under the effect of dominate person. We questioned her until a contingency spell of hers rendered her comatose, at which point the wizard returned her to her room and erased all incriminating memories. The devil missed out on most of this, as he was off succumbing to his hedonistic tendencies.

note: The DM stated that this escapade was not very alignment-healthy, although nobody actually got nailed.

In terms of the underwater exploration mission, we have found a some sealed siege laboratories which the crew is working on peeling open. In the meantime, we have discovered considerable amounts of loot in the armory and war museum, most of which goes to the Atherton Society, and I am becoming a veritable wall of weapons: I had part of my magical (and enchanted to be invisible) mithril supply forged into weapons following the design of those found on the corpses of soldiers aboard the demon heart ship. My arsenal consists of a pick (my weapon of choice), a spiked shield, armor spikes, a longbow, a blackjack, a silver dagger, and now a wrist-mounted repeating mini-crossbow and a retractable, wrist-mounted, invisible short sword. Life is good. Also, the devil has expressed an interest in getting some of that mithril for similar weapons. We have yet to come to an arrangement. *signs off*

*signs back on as Columbo* One more thing: as of next session we will have one more player. Fortunately, she will be playing a divine spellcaster, a nice that isn't really filled yet. Somewhat...less fortunate is the identity of her character: the doctor and archivist we stalked, dominated,  interrogated, and hit with amnesia. Things will be very interesting.

A true D&D experience

We started the meeting at 4 and ended at 1. That is how you play Dungeons and Dragons.

The skyberg we smashed open last session turned out to be leaking a potentially endless supply of demon blood, resulting in us PCs having to trek inside the skyberg and destroy the Demon Heart generating it. We did so, in the process retrieving several magical artifacts (not with a capital Artifacts, just items of considerable interest and probably value) and nearly getting pulverized by a demon-tainted elder omni-elemental. Having a heavily-armed airship allowed us to fight it off in a battle peppered both by events such as the crew nailing an air elemental to an iceberg with a ballista, an earth elemental giving a water elemental a Fastball Special to our airship, me cleaving said water elemental in half on its arrival, and the devil teleporting into a fire elemental to kill it from the inside, and by a string of such hideous rolls (resulting in multiple cannons nearly blowing open other potentially demon-containing skybergs, our ranger shooting the devil for maximum damage, and a ballista clipping me) that the others want to get dice that are not mine as soon as possible. Also, the crew was almost as good at taking orders as the two guards in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Long story short, we destroyed the demon heart, killed the elementals, lost several crew members, had so put the scouting ship in for repairs, and made off with some interesting relics. My quarters, for example, now contain a demon-tainted, transparent mithril door. The wizard dispelled most of the taint, but it still has a tendency to curse me out.

After stopping to repair the scout ship and mine some coldfire orbs, we arrived at the submerged city we were sent to explore. So far the scientists are conducting their research and nothing has leapt out of the ruins to eat us. There were some things tracking us for a few days, but then they vanished. We discovered some interesting magical devices clearly used for combat training purposes, and we appropriated some of this magic to allow the paladin and me to have a no-holds-barred duel for the benefit of the crew. It is a good thing that we had non-lethal duplicates of our weapons for this duel, as I tore the paladin apart in two rounds.

Now that we've had a couple sessions to see how everything works, here is what the party members bring to the table:

• Allistair (the devil): Knowledge on matters old and arcane, mobility, being FREAKING UNTOUCHABLE (very high saves, and Armor Class is a 39!). The downside? He has the lowest hp and attack bonus of the melee specialists.
  
• Kosov (the wizard): Crafting constructs, weapons, and armor, enchantments, generally being a genius. The downside? He's squishy (naturally: he's a wizard) and can't do much against foes immune to mind-affecting attacks.
  
• "Batman" (the ranger): Archery, scouting, generally being a skill monkey. The downside? His damage output is low and he is probably the second most fragile overall.
  
• I-forgot-his-name (the paladin): Healing and buffs, a griffon companion, ability to inflict lots of damage against evil (and absolutely hideous damage against fiends (glances at Allistair, who I might remind you is not personally evil)). The downside? Doesn't excel in any area of combat the way the others do, and not much in skills.
  
• Hornethand (me, the fighter): Knowledge on matters war- and tactics-related, holding rank on the ship, and being an absolute beast in melee (second-highest Armor Class, highest attack, damage, and HP). The downside? I'm pretty lame at whatever I didn't list as a strength, and I need a wisdom transplant (Intelligence is actually fine).
  

All in all, the campaign is off to a good start. Now I need to catch up on sleep.

Weather update

 California is getting what right now? Overcast skies? Maybe a bit of drizzle?

We're getting lightning and hail.

The D&D campaign has begun

At last!

It's a 10th-level campaign. The party consists of a griffon-riding paladin, a chaotic good erinyes devil (with some modifications to fit the ECL*), an enchanter who sounds like Sean Connery, a low-wisdom-but-very-tankish fighter serving as a lieutenant commander (that's me), and an archery-focused Batman (or as close to Batman as one will get in D&D). We are currently on an airship reconnaissance mission (upon which I am said lieutenant commander), and in the first session we have had to fight off a pair of zombified windghosts, one of which ate the erinyes, who proceeded to cut and burn his way out. Unfortunately, one of the cannons on the airship has blasted open a skyberg containing a Demon Heart-powered construct. We'll find out how that goes next session.

*The devil was initially obscenely powerful, but then I explained the ECL rules to the guy helping to stat this character, resulting in considerable nerfs and my title of "Rules Lawyer Bitch Bitch Bitch Nazi Bitch."

Beating a dead horse for 1d6+1 per round

The campaign starts in an hour and a half, and I'm feeling a tad bored, so I'm going to go through Dark Dungeons and take it apart panel by panel. Yes, I already know that I'm late and that Jack Chick is a moron. I'm just doing this to kill time and hopefully entertain.

Panel 1: Hoo boy. Two speech bubbles and already Jack has shown us three mistakes. First, the DM should have said, "Okay, wizard, it's your turn." Not only do DMs not dicate players' actions, but how do we know that the wizard wasn't going to throw a quickened spell in on the side? Second, as far as I know, there is no spell that causes blindness without a saving throw aside from power word, blind, and that is not a "spell of light" (not to mention that the odds of getting your hands of a scroll of a seventh-level spell in an eighth-level party are pretty low. Third, "spell of light?" There are only several dozen and then some light-based spells in existence. You're gonna need to be more specific. (Not an error per se, but you would think the player would also be more specific than "the monster.")

Panel 2: Killing the PC by fiat? Bad DM! Now, had it been a trap of power word, kill that would have been acceptable by the rules, but it was specifically labeled as a poison trap. No attack roll? No Reflex save? No Fortitude save? No rolling of Constitution damage (Sure, there are a few instant-kill poisons out there, but the other points still stand)? As for BLACK LEAF?!? I'm not even going to bother going there. But I will take a look at the response: "Marcie, get out of here! YOU'RE DEAD! You don't exist anymore!" Perhaps you've forgotten, Mr. Chick, that D&D is a social game. Death is not an excuse to kick a player out. Marcie would either be rolling up a new character or waiting for somebody to cast raise dead. Mr. Chick has also forgotten how much of a revolving door D&D death has.

Panel 3: As for the idea of D&D teaching real-world spellcasting, I have only this to say: if that were remotely possible, gamers would have conquered the world long ago. Either that or blown it up by mistake. Oh, and qualifying by virtue of her cleric being 8th level? What's up with that? You would think that the bar would at least be at a point where on gains access to a new levels of spells ingame, but 8th is a rather boring level for clerics. Unless you're really excited about being able to turn that wight. Then again, the line "you have the personality for it now" could be interpreted as a reference to the 8th-level ability score increase being put into Charisma...if I had the slightest suspicion that Jack knew the rules that well.

Panel 4: "Priestess" and "witch" are NOT synonymous. Assuming that he is using witch as the female equivalent of wizard, they don't even cast from the same family of spells. And there is no way that Debbie is multiclassing already.

Panel 5: Okay, this one's rather boring. All I can do here is say, "First spell (i.e. first-level spell)? REAL POWER? Don't make me laugh. Sure, any spellcasting beats no spellcasting, but still: fear my COLOR SPRAY!"

Panel 6: *sigh* There is no "mind bondage" spell. Perhaps you meant, charm person?

Panel 7: Only $200? That's no min/maxer mentality, Debbie. If you're going to use Enchantment (Charm) [Mind-Affecting] spells on your family members to make them carry out your will, you might as well go all out.

Panel 8: You are playing by yourself. Um, no. I doubt the DM is invisible. Also, since there are no other players at the table, you won't make anyone wait by talking to Marcie. It's not like the Zombie (inexplicably captialized) is going anywhere. But most egregiously: you are playing an 8th-level cleric (probably higher by now), and you're having trouble with a ZOMBIE? Black Leaf probably would have done better in the coven.

Panel 9: Again, see my note on revolving door D&D death and player response.

Panel 10: Hooray for narm!

Panel 11: No, it's not your fault Black Leaf died. See my note about poor trap implementation on the part of the DM.

Panel 12: You won't be keeping many players around with an attitude like that.

Panel 13: See my note on bad DM-ing. Again. And regarding the law of your faith, I'd say that using...ahem...mind bondage is treading the line.

Panel 14: Nothing to say here, except that Jack has totally undermined himself. But we knew that already.

Panel 15: And heeere comes the DMPC to save the day!

Panel 16: How, may I ask, do you know what she's involved in? Did you cast scrying?

Panel 17: "Dungeon of bondage." Cute.

Panel 18: *British accent* We have found a gamer! May we burn her?

Panel 19: Interesting that we only see one person coming forward. In fact, the folks in the background look downright bored.

Panel 20: Huh. She thinks the PHB has more influence than the DM? Hasn't she ever heard of Rule Zero?

Panel 21: One last thought: This guy is calling upon a divine power to achieve supernatural results with the assistance of verbal and somatic components. Not unlike the manner in which D&D clerics cast spells...

Audition news

Auditions for Little Shop of Horrors are tomorrow, and I definitely want to get cast as the dentist, both for enjoyment and the fact that it looks like my best vocal fit. But I need to work on a song, and pick it fast. Les Miz has been disallowed, and I can't do Phantom at audition levels, so that leaves me with Urinetown. But what to sing? "Mr. Cladwell'' is probably my strongest, but it goes into a choral section early on. "Cop Song" is more of a patter song than melodic. "Don't Be The Bunny" is solid and entirely solo, but it feels a bit too methodical for an Orin audition song. "Snuff That Girl" has the perfect feel, but the second verse is sung by a girl, so I don't know if the director would mind me choosing that song.

Scratch "Cop Song." It's the one with which I'm least lyrically familiar, and it doesn't show off my singing ability as much as the others.

Scratch "Mr. Cladwell." The director might want me to keep singing when the chorus comes in, and it doesn't feel quite character-appropriate.

Snuff or bunny? Hmmm... Snuff is more energetic, but bunny is more sadistic. I'm more familiar with bunny, and I don't have to gender-bend any verses...

Don't Be the Bunny it is. Now I should really get a good night's sleep.

Creepypasta

It's been forever since I've written anything, but reading some creepypasta collections inspired me to try a few of my own.

A Chat Over Dinner

If you are the type who eats out regularly, one day a stranger might join you at the table. This stranger will always appear to be of your age and sex, and he (if it is a he) will only appear if you are alone. No matter what style of restaurant it is, he will always be carrying his own plate of food.

After a few seconds, he will look directly at you and say, “You seem like an interesting person. May I know you better?” Say yes, and he will begin to ask you questions about yourself in between bites. These questions will be innocuous enough at first: what your name is, what you do for a living, and so forth, but should you open your mouth to answer, you will be forced to tell the truth, even if you do not consciously know what the truth is. Remain silent, and the stranger will scowl at you, pick up his plate, and leave. You will never see him again. If you do indulge his questions, however, they will grow darker and darker as the food leaves his plate, and it will become harder and harder to resist answering. Do not attempt to leave the table before he does under any circumstances.

When his plate is clean, he will stand up to leave, but not before asking you one last, irresistible question: “What would drive you to take your own life?” You will instantly be aware that you will be able to lie in response to this one question, and I suggest you do, for whatever you describe will come to pass within the week. Those who are canny may use this chat to gain whatever they desire, but know that if the happenstance you name does not drive you to suicide, the stranger will start guessing as to what will. And consider how much he now knows about you.

The Childish Instinct

            Everybody knows that children possess the instinct close their eyes when afraid. They think that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you. Everybody also knows that this is hogwash. Except when it isn’t.

            The next time you are looking into darkness, or perhaps the time after that, a pair of eyes may open in the black, even if you know they couldn’t be there. These eyes, large and inhuman, will fill you with a terror you have not felt since you were a child who just learned about the monsters waiting in the closet. Do not make eye contact. The instant you look directly at it, it will know. Remain still and silent until they are gone. If you are in bed you might risk slowly pulling the covers over your head, but do not make eye contact.

            If the darkness in which you see the eyes is that of your own closed eyelids, opening them will not save you.

Pop-Up

            There is a certain page on the Internet. Nobody knows when it was created, and nobody ever comes across it by looking. If you find it, a pop-up window will appear. The window will display an eyeless, black-and-white face a few strands of hair and a plaintive smile. Should you see this face, immediately type, “I like you.” Punctuation and capitalization are not so important, but don’t go out of your way to be sloppy. Do this and the words, “I like you, too” will flash across your screen. The pop-up will then vanish. This is the only way to get rid of it. Otherwise the face will follow you from page to page. Even if you turn off the computer, the pop-up will still be there, and the more you try to get away from the face, the more its expression will shift to a hideous frown. The worst possible thing you can do is to leave your computer while the pop-up remains. It will appear on whatever surface you look at next, its grimace filled with teeth. The last thing you ever see will be the face opening its mouth.

Reflection

            For some time, there lived a certain man in eastern Washington named Sheldon. Every day he woke up, ate breakfast, attended his mindless job, came home, and slept. He had no friends, for he never bothered to make any. The only thing at all interesting about Sheldon was his bathroom, or rather the mirror in it. The mirror took up an entire wall from ceiling to floor. Even the sink had been fixed as a standalone structure to keep the mirror unbroken.

            One morning—who knows which morning it was?—Sheldon noticed that he had never seen himself smiling in the mirror. It was not that he was particularly depressed, but he thought that he would have smiled at his reflection at least once. He pondered this for a moment, then shrugged and continued his day.

            When Sheldon came home that afternoon he felt a need to relieve himself. While washing his hands, he glanced at his reflection again and was taken aback to see that his face had settled into a rather unnerving frown, almost as if he were disgusted with himself.

            A few more days passed, and Sheldon could not help but notice that he looked unhappier and unhappier every time he looked in the mirror, even if he didn’t feel it. Soon he grew to hate his reflection unreasonably. He began to have nightmares about being stalked by a shadowy version of himself, face perpetually twisted in rage.

            On the fifth straight night of screaming himself awake, Sheldon dashed into the bathroom and hit the light switch, staring wildly into the mirror and grabbing his cheeks, forcing himself to grin. All he got in return was the same glower as in his dreams. Without even thinking, Sheldon slammed the mirror with his fist. Cracks spread, and as they did, Sheldon gasped in pain. He looked at his hand to see a network of cuts opening cross it. Within seconds the mirror was crisscrossed with fractures, as was Sheldon’s body. He collapsed, blood-soaked. The Sheldon in the mirror did not.

            The dying man stared into the mirror as a hand identical to his started brushing away fragments of glass, creating an ever-widening hole. A moment before Sheldon’s body fell apart, he saw his reflection smile for the first time.

            Sheldon’s co-workers have noticed how much more interesting he is nowadays, and they are starting to feel rather dull by comparison. A few have not smiled for almost a week.

Don’t Think

            Everybody has a thought that accompanies his or her death. This thought is different for each person. And the laws of the universe dictate that this thought must always go hand in hand with death. If you discover what your death-thought is before your time, not only will you fall dead on the spot, but the universe will also make sure you suffer eternally for trying to cheat it. There is no way to know what your death-thought is without thinking it. So don’t think. Don’t think of anything. Just hope that you die before your mind crosses that invisible line.

The Photograph Pile

A young girl walking home from school found a small pile of Polaroid photos lying in the gutter. There were twenty in all, neatly wrapped in a rubber band. She picked them up, and as she walked she started to browse. The first photo was that of a ghostly white man on a black background, standing just far enough away from the camera that she couldn’t make out his features. The girl slid the photo to the back of the stack and looked at the next one. The photo was of the same man now standing a bit closer.  The girl flipped through the next several photos quickly. With each one the man in the picture came a bit closer and his features were a bit clearer. Turning the last corner to her house, the girl noticed that the man in the photos seems to be looking at her even when she moved the stack from side to side. It frightened her, but she kept flipping them over, one by one. By the nineteenth picture, the man was so close his face completely filled the frame. His expression was the most horrifying the girl had ever seen. Walking up the driveway, she turned to the last photo. This time, instead of an image, there were two words: “Close enough.” Hearing a scream, the girl’s brother rushed to the door and opened it. All he saw was a pile of photographs lying on the doorstep. The top one looked like an extremely pale version of his sister, but she was standing too far back for him to be sure.

Passing Silence

            Two months ago I visited my aunt in the Midwest. She greeted me at the airport and gave me a lift back to her house. The drive was around ninety minutes, which we spent chatting about this and that. As we walked from the car toward her house I noticed that her voice, and indeed the various background noises sounded a bit fainter than before. When I remarked upon this, my own voice was fainter still. I wondered for a moment if I had started to develop a hearing problem, but this though was driven away when my aunt went pale and uttered, “Oh, God, not now!” By now any noise was barely more audible than a whisper. She rushed me inside, locked the door behind, drew the shutters, and motioned urgently that we were to get under the kitchen table—for now the air was completely silent. Not a second after we had done so, the house darkened significantly, and it shook lightly every few seconds. This went on for five whole minutes until light and sound began to return to normal, and another ten minutes before my aunt would budge from under the table. For the rest of my visit she refused to speak of what had happened.

The Scientific Method

"So, what have you been up to, Peter?"

"Oh, I spent the morning sodomizing a dead cat. And you?"

Evaluations in CAPITALS

Seventeenth-century wigs look RIDICULOUS.

Tragic Greek obligation/revenge charts are COMPLICATED.

Cyclically second-guessing oneself is MADDENING.

End of line.

Drama update and whatnot

So we're coming up on performance weekend for The Learned Ladies. Today we rehearsed in full costume and makeup (except for wigs, which we get tomorrow). Costumes are period, Trissotin looks wonderfully ridiculous, Vadius looks like a vampire, and I have a bell-bottom vest. Also, now that I've shaved, I think that if I grew my hair long again I could pass for a girl. Not that I plan to; as I (eventually) realized with Sweet Charity, I'd just have to cut it short again for the next play. But I digress.

Lines are still a bit shaky for various cast members, and we've got a couple of sickees. Hope they recover soon. On the academic front, we've finished The Odyssey and are now on to The Oresteia, and we're coming to the last few proofs in Book 1 of the Elements.

Bad joke for the day: What do you call a psychopathic opera singer? Resonant Evil.