Here's something of note:  MSN Entertainment - News - Couric, Leno Trading Places

Anyway, let's open the Wayback Machine and return to the Eleventh of April this year.  It was a Friday, so of course I attended Jackson's D&D campaign session again.  Rusty was going to pick up Kitty from the airport and the two of them were going to dinner that night instead of coming to the game.  Thus Tom turned down running his kid NPC campaign yet again. 

The group battled hordes of enhanced skeletons, zombies, and ghouls and the mithril smelting plant.  Meanwhile, Zed had snuck in and rescued the last dwarven princess of the Icehammer clan and the battlerager who was sworn to protect her.  The Seven had a brilliant plan going where they would cast offensive spells, thus dropping their invisibility, only to have another of their number recast invisibility upon them all again a few segments later.  They blinded the Hinn and Squigbarm, death rayed Syrus, enfeebled Ethan's bodyguard, and level drained Delome!  Luckily, we kept them at bay long enough to hack into the skull of the huge zombie golem--which was composed of various skulls of all the sentient races wired together-- and remove the coffin placed where the brain should have been.  Zed opened it and nearly sucked us all through the gate to the Negative Material Plane.  Luckily we got it closed without losing Zed.  Meanwhile, the others looted what they could and burned down the rest. 

We ended up teleporting out with the various rescued dwarves, carts full of mithril ore and some already smelted ingots, a few dwarven masterwork weapons, the gate to the Negative Material Plane, a small lap dog, a potion, some scrolls, a Ring of the Cult of the Dragon, a loadof information to pass on to the lords of Silverymoon, the enemity of the Seven, and all of our party memebers!  I thought for sure we wouldn't all come home from that one. 

The next night we played Steve's D&D campaign.  You might recall that we last left off where the party had succesfully taken a Zhent fort on the road to between the Moonsea, Dagger Falls, and Mith Dranor.  We picked things up with our rouge, Magnus, failing to disable the trap on the inner door of the fort.  Our gnome paladin, Caleb, then chose to open the door anyway.  He was rewarded with a blast of electricity which knocked him back five feet and prone.  Next, our changling druid of Lurue,  Capernicus, stood behind Caleb ready to catch him when he tried again.  Luckily, the trap was expended and the door opened.  Unfortunately, as he opened the door the remaining Zhentarim agent used his readied action to fire an arrow into Caleb, thus mortally wounding him.  Cap stepped in front of his fallen companion to fight the fallen intruder while the clerics attended to him.  However, while Cap maneuvered into place to let Magnus flank the agent, Cap, too, was mortally wounded. 

Once we defeated the agent, healed ourselves, and discovered that the last agent's holy symbol of Bane radiated evil magic, it was time to enter the dungeon underneath the trapdoor he was protecting.  Caleb was kind enough to take the shock after Magnus failed to disarm the trap again.  Below we found torches, more Zhent agents, some masterwork weapons, an alter to Bane, some secret doors, a multi-portal, and some devout worshippers of Bane in black armour.  They mistook us for worshippers of Cyric when they first attacked, but they continue to fight once we corrected them.  :0  One did flee through the multi-portal, so it was time to go before the guy brought back reinforcements. 

Sunday we had a lovely Passion Sunday mass.  As you know, this was our first year with a new parish hall.  So I wasn't surprised to see that we did not start the Blessing of the Palms in the old hall.  However, we had it in the new grass courtyard instead!  The weather was perfect for it, and the blessing and procession into the church were beautiful. 

The Passion was performed the same way as last year, with the same parishoners in the same roles.  Three females were on the right side of the alter, all at different levels, while three males were on the left in the same fashion.  This created a kind of V-shape, with another male in the point of the V on ground level in front of the alter.  Another male standing atop a box in front of the alter, where the box is on the top level with the alter, stands with his back to the parishoners except when his parts (Pontius Pilot) came up, at which point the male below him (Jesus of Nazareth) would turn his back to them.  Father Milt narrated from the ambo.  It was all well choreographed, and amazingly memorized.  Last year I think they read from three ring binders.  This year only father read.  The others were reciting from memory!  Amazing.  Praise God that it worked out so well. 

And thus ends part one of my catch up.  Find out how the rest of Paul's Holy Week went in the next installment of Chernabog's Xanga site!