Roger Thursday and the Return of Masquero

I’ve been getting to do some more D&D over the last few weeks.

Last weekend our usual D&D group withpyat as DM got together. After some frenetic activity where we lost one PC to a Disintegrate spell (shadow_maze’s character Eidolon, alas) the rest of us went up a level (with Roger Thursday finally hitting 18th level). Thursday’s next action will have to be a True Resurrection for the fallen Elf (that is if he can find a 5000 GP, the material component for the spell).

And remember that D&D-esque Mage with the kick-ass stats I played last year in a Old School Dungeon Master’s drop-in session, Masquero? He’s back, ditto the DM, Grant.

Marnee and Daniel’s friend Grant (who lives in Saskatoon) was back briefly in Ontario, and wanted to run another continuation of his previous game which I wrote about earlier here. I learned this at a party I was attending with my family, and after getting agreement from the Mrs, left the party early to game at their place.

I was back playing Masquero the mage, Marnee an Elvin fighter, Daniel a shifty Halfling rogue, their daughter a cleric, their son a dwarven fighter.

shadow_maze, who hadn’t played last year, was a cleric of Pelor.

We started off in a snowy valley in an no-man’s-land away from so-called civilization. where an uneasy alliance of Gnolls, Goblins, Wargs and Kobolds had raiding parties roaming about. We were in search of some form of token or artifact to explain this unification of enemies. Two surviving enemies from our last battle were running away; an injured Warg and his Goblin ride. We ran after (speed 15 feet/6 second round) and Marnee’s PC spotted and shot the Goblin. The Warg got away…

The characters and situation were continued exactly as they were before, with Grant handing back our (updated character sheets). I noted with interest that Masquero had gone up to 385 xp and his encumbrance was updated to reflect the few new GPs and the bent long-sword picked up last time.

After following the trail for another 1.5 hours, one that winded its way along a ridge on one side, and a cliff edge on the other, we spotted a fresh land-slide along the path just before it turned, hiding the view beyond where we expected a camp to be. We ducked into the rocks, and the Halfling climbed the rocks silently, and spotted on the other side a hill where a Gnoll was holding watch. The Halfling came back and we decided if they were waiting and watching, we’d do the same, and rest and recover. The night passed uneventfully.

In the am, the Halfling climbed the cliff edge, and from this vantage spied out the landscape. The hill with the watchful (now nodding Gnoll) was packed full of enemies. There were 2 Gnolls, 2 Goblins, 2 Wargs, and 6 Kobolds packing the hillside, with most asleep in their camp. There were only 4 good approaches to the snowy hill, and each were guarded with a cylindrical log set to roll down the hill should enemies approach.

We all discussed what we would do. While our first idea was to simply have all of us climb the ridge and sneak around this powerful camp, we were also typical adventurers (i.e. wanting to kill things and take their stuff). Instead we came up with a plan whereshadow_maze’s cleric would hole up on the top of the ridge and start sniping at the near hillside from this position of safety, while the rest of us would sneak up from behind the back of the hill away from the watchful Gnoll guard, and attack from behind with the benefit of surprise.

Three hours later (or 90 seconds game time) we finally won over our enemies. While the others had fun whamming on kobolds and goblins (including turning the log trap onto one of the Goblin-Warg combinations, my character spent half that time running up the hill before he could cast his spell-staff augmented Grease spell on those greenie’s still alive after the killer Halfling started wrecking mayhem with his crossbow.

shadow_maze’s cleric had ran out of arrows for sniping, but in the process had finally knocked down at least one of the Gnolls so that the other cleric killed him while she herself knocked down to just 2 HP.

::B::