The Most Excellent Adventure Ends

Rufus, the most excellent cleric, has finished his adventure, with a most triumphant victory over the heinous forces of evil.  Followers of the Lawgiver, the Old Faith, and the Most Excellent One came together under a righteous rhythm to aid the founder of the village and fight the massed armies of evil about to march upon the village.  Artifacts were destroyed, preventing a most bogus end to the villagers of Hommel Lane.

However, the victory came at a cost.  Two of Rufus's fellow adventurers, Silvo and Belfire, were missing at the end of the battle.  No, most excellent friends, they did not fall.  Rufus fully believes that the Most Excellent One called them, based on their bravery and valour as they strove to be excellent to the villagers, to where they are needed most.  The most sainted ones will do well, no matter where they went.

In appreciation for saving the village, the mayor of Hommel Lane granted land to each of the adventurers who most excellently helped.  Rufus shall be opening a temple/tavern, where he'll perform three nights a week and be avavilable for b'nai and b'not mitzvah when he's not tending to the village's spiritual needs.  A room is always available to the most sainted ones, Silvo and Belfire, if and when they return.

So, fellow adventurers, be excellent to each other, and party on, dudes!

[Next season of Encounters moves the setting to the Forgotten Realms town of Neverwinter.  The players Silvo and Belfire will keep playing their PCs next season.  I'm going to create a new character, having missed the previous Neverwinter season.  If there's a sequel to this season, Rufus will return.]

A Most Excellent Update!

Going back a bit, I introduced Rufus, my character for this season's D&D Encounters.  I am having a most excellent time playing him.

Rufus has reached second level, and should soon reach third.  In this time, he has helped root out a most heinous conspiracy in Hommel Lane, helped a poor drunken villager find out about his brother's fate (without the flumphs), and got set up in a most bogus trap, all while gaining followers!

The conspiracy in Hommel Lane involves a most heinous ugly evil god, one who hates the excellent people of the land and wishes to enslave them, or worse.  While rooting out the scourge of banditry has helped the excellent village, that was merely a mere scratch into the conspiracy and the bogus cult.

In an oddity of the setting, one that I wasn't aware of when first conceptualizing Rufus, there are two main religions.  First, there's the Old Faith, one that follows the ways of nature.  A benign following, though, like nature, can be a most dangerous foe.  Second, there's the Lawgiver, the new faith, bringing order to an undisciplined land.  Naturally, given the choice, Rufus went for the lasagna.  Rufus follows the Most Excellent One, whose greatest wish is for all peoples to be excellent to each other and to party on, dudes!  However, in Hommel Lane, Rufus is seen as an harmless oddity, even by the constabulary.

A side trip to the Caves of Chaos (a most forboding name if I ever saw one) brought Rufus face to face with the villager's missing brother.  Seeing that the villager was in great peril of becoming another gateway for the most evil and ugly god trying to return to wreak havok across the land, Rufus defeated the zombie that the brother had become and returned the body to the villager for proper last rites, all while telling the villager of the good his brother had done.  And good he had indeed done, for he had located the second artifact needed to open the gateway for the heinous deity.

During the wake, which was only different from an Irish wake because the deceased wasn't propped on a bier with a beer, Rufus and his comrades continued their investigation, trying to find how deep the most heinous cult had installed themselves into the village.  The discovery that the innkeeper was in on the conspiracy came about when he asked the group to go to the party room in the basement.  Fully expecting the betrayal, the party was ready.  It was during the wait that Rufus discovered that one of the party, a dwarf by the name of Belfire Battleheart, had become a follower of the Most Excellent One.  Rufus now needs a proper church, but that can wait until after the heinous conspiracy has been removed.

What's next, you may well wonder.  I wonder, too, for after springing the trap and trouncing the most heinous brigands to attack us, we're taken their bodies and followed a cavern beyond a secret door leading to the Temple of the Lawgiver.  It appears that the Temple has a bogus infestation of cultists that needs to be cleansed.

Strikers

Last night's D&D Encounters went well.  Far more combat than previous sessions, definitely.  My PC, an eladrin nethermancer with drow issues, managed to participate in them, too.  The mix of characters did show how brutal a party of strikers can be in D&D 4th.  We had an oversized table due to a lack of DMs.  My table had a drow assassin, a pixie vampire, a dwarf hunter, a half-orc berserker, a dwarf slayer, and my nethermancer.  In game terms, that's three and a half strikers (berserkers are part defenders, part striker, depending on temperament), half a defender, and two controllers.  Our opponents couldn't stay on their feet, thanks to the dwarf hunter, and then were pummeled into a thin paste, thanks to the strikers.  To give you an idea of how dangerous a party like this is, ask the cave fishers (underground oversized crayfish with a taste for adventurers).  They started on the ceiling, attacking from above.  One died from bloodloss caused by axes and swords.  The other, well, pummeled by a pixie, then dropped from the ceiling by the hunter.

The big bad of the night turned out to be a drow wraith.  Undead are usually vulnerable to radiant, yet we had no one who had radiant attacks.  Well, almost no one.  My nethermancer had an at-will that takes on the damage type of the target's vulnerability.  But, I had something I wished to try first.  My eladrin has a neat cantrip, Disrupt Undead, that reduces the target's necrotic resistance, something undead have an abundance of.  So, hit it that.  Hit it with a nethermancy spell, and whiffed, though the effect went off.  Used an action and whiffed with the other spell with necrotic damage, though it's effect also went off.  Argh!  But, I ended the fight.  I used the Unravelling Dart spell with its variable damage type.  Minimal damage, but strikers still do a lot of damage, even when halved due to insubstantialness.  Just a frustrating first round with the two misses.

Next week, back to the dwarven kingdom with the unicorn horn.

A little ditty...

During a discussion at tonight's D&D Encounters of what the creepy crawly in the cave was, the following came to mind:

In the tundra, the frozen tundra,
The ice worm sleeps tonight.
In the tundra, the cold, cold tundra,
The ice worm sleeps tonight.

A Rhemoraz, a Rhemoraz, a Rhemoraz, a Rhemoraz,
A Rhemoraz, a Rhemoraz, a Rhemoraz, a Rhemoraz.

A Decision is Made!

Yes, indeed, I have made a decision.  Unfortunately, not for NaNoWriMo.  Le sigh.  (Though that is coming after Part III of Characterization tomorrow.)

No, what I have done is decide what my character will be for the next season of D&D Encounters.  It's the final arc of the Web of Spiders, where the fate of the Realms are in the hands of the players.  One last push against the Drow after they've enacted a plot to steal the Demonweave of magic for the Spider Queen herself, Lloth.

I shall be playing Valanæ Winterbreeze, an Eladrin nethermancer (shadow wizard), who escaped from the Drow's clutches with the help of her assistant familiar, who will be working to keep Valanæ on the straight and narrow.  She will be joining such companions as Miss Quito, a vampiric Pixie, as they fight to keep the Realms safe from the machinations of the Demon Queen of Spiders.

Now to make sure that Valanæ has a cutie mark...