Garfield's Twelve Days of Christmas

 

Well, they say a habit is formed within fourteen days, so let's hope my habit of writing regularly here can be transformed into writing every day period.  We'll see. 

 

On the 1st Steve ran his Forgotten Realms Dungeons and Dragons 3.0 campaign.  We were to start at noon, but it was more like 13:00 hours.  Even then, Smitty didn't show up for at least another half-hour after that.  First up, we had a day with two bouts.  The first bout at noon set us up against a plethora of undead, including a mummy, two huge-size zombies, two huge-size skeletons, and about a dozen dread warriors.  It was tough, but we were spelled-up enough between Malekith and Capernicus that we survived. 

 

The second bout at 16:00 hours pit us up against a clay golem.  With his damage reduction and what seemed to be an immunity to electricity, only Turok was able to even hurt it.  Unfortunately, he was doing enough to kill the weaker of us to Turok in damage each round.  The golem master had demanded the bout after Malekith has used major image to make it appear that the iron golem had joined us to combat the wizards.  Each round, an image of the golem master appeared in the arena and offered to let us surrender.  After half a dozen rounds he said that it was the final round he would make that offer.  We begrudgingly surrendered.

 

After the fight the quagroths were preparing to enter the arena while we were preparing to leave.  Their leader gave Turok a hard time, and it nearly came to blows.  Turok finally offered to meet their leader in one-on-one combat in the arena.  We took the next day off to heal up and watch the bouts.  We still failed to find our quarry.  Our stablemaster told Turok that he would not schedule a bout between him and the quagroth as it wouldn't be profitable.  He did offer to smuggle a weapon down to the stables for him, so that Turok could kill him down there.  Turok refused.

 

He also explained to us how we had shamed him in front of the golem master when we accepted his offer of surrender.  Many people die against the golems, but the shame done to our stablemaster was done as payback for the use of the image of the iron golem a few days before.  We lost the favour of the crowd, lost face for our stablemaster, and lost money for our stablemaster.  We able to console him with the fact that because we survived, we would continue to make more money for him in the future than he lost through this one bout.

 

We paused the game for dinner, which was the Domino's 555 deal.  We all chipped in for a mushroom, a pepperoni, and a ham.  Boy, what they call a medium pizza is really small.  Maybe their small pizzas are personal pan pizzas?

 

After the dinner break we dived back into the game.  The next day saw us only entering one bout at noon.  It was against Zhent naval mutineers, so we were going to be able to gain back our standing with the crowd if we defeated them.  Dang were they tough!

 

The first two rows of soldiers held longspears behind a shieldwall.  Each row was lead by a cleric with a signal whistle.  The back two rows were archers lead by a single cleric who also had a signal whistle.  We attacked their flank in order to avoid their set for charge.  The clerics started with prayer, kept up the barrage of spells from their while their archers attacked thebiggest threat each round and their spearmen attacked from 10 ' away.  Midway through the combat we had killed one cleric and a few soldiers from each row, while they dropped Malekith (for spelling our side up and her protective aura) and Turok (for dealing our massive amounts of damage so quickly).  Capernicus had to ignore the flaming sphere with which he had been chasing one of the clerics in order to go heal Malekith, who then in turn healed Turok.  He then helped to heal Turok, before turning into a bear and wrecking havok in the remaining forces.  Unfortunately, that dropped Capernicus until Malekith was able to take some goodberries from Turok over and feed them to stave off Capernicus's death.  Magnus had been awesome during the fight, deflecting arrows with his shortsword until they started to flee him.  Turin stayed away from melee, preferring to slay the archers with his own archery. 

 

So, when as we left the field barely alive but victorious, we ran into the quagroth.  Their leader once again tried to start something and used the fact that Turok wouldn't fight him to belittle him.  That ended up leading to conflict between Turin and Turok, as Turin belittled Turok in front of both the quagroths and us over the situation. 

 

Dang, my Disney's Christmas Singalong tape ended but I never heard the snap of the player setting the play button to off.  So I go to flip it over, and low and behold it still shows it playing.  I feared tape feed problems like the other night.  Instead, I turn it off and open it to find that the tape has completely wound up to one side.  The tape no longer connected the two wheels.  It now is wrapped around the other.  Add it to the list of ones I'll need to replace someday. 

 

Uh oh, on top of all that I'm nodding off here.  Time for bed!  Later.