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.