Saturday 5 December 2009

Bridge to Destruction – A Bridge Two Far. Part 1

Every year, myself and some friend go to place called Lake Jubilee, hire some cabins there, and hang out for 4 days. In that time, we usually do quite a bit of gaming. Last year we played Microlite20, with me running an adventure I made up as we went. It was a train-wreck of a game, but we all had great fun. You can find (somewhat misspelled) write-ups of that game here and here.

So, this year, we played the sequel.

Three players returned from last year. I’d long since misplaced their old character sheets, so we re-built their characters – Vincent the Dwarven cleric of Urinor, Robble Steinberg the Halfling Illusionist, and Macbeth the elf rogue. In the process of re-rolling everybody’s stats, Macbeth ended up with a far lower Mind score than last year, and a far higher Strength. As he’d ended the last game on the gallows for grand arson, we decided he had in fact been hung, and later brought back as a semi-zombie thing. Brains.

The first of the new players (my good friend Zorro, who often goes by the handle Altharis) to join in rolled up a Bard with low Dexterity and high Strength. As a result, he decided to be Pöwër Mürdërfäcë*, the half-orc bass player.

*it actually had more umlauts in it, on some of the consonants as well, but there aren’t symbols for that.

The game proper began in a inn called the Bridge and Chasm, which just happened to be next to a bridge over a chasm. The high wizard Gandelmindorlin had called the four heroes here (or in Macbeth’s case, reanimated and dragged him here) to tell them of a prophesy they must fulfil. I went around the table to ask for suggestions for this epic quest. Many ideas were given, but only one was truly worthy – that the adventurers must seek out Serj Tankian’s Beard, and use it to help defeat the armies laying siege to the city of Rothaven.

The group enthusiastically agreed (as if they had a choice. It was a prophesy after all), and Gandelmindorlin cast a teleportation spell on them, to send them where they needed to go.

…apparently where they needed to go was a small alley next to the Death of Rats Tavern in Rothaven. I described Rothaven as a hive of scum and villainy, and everybody hummed the requisite bit of Bith Jazz. Pöwër then determined to assault the jazz-playing busker that must be the source of the Jazz. Having done so, and stolen the hapless saxophonist’s hat full of coins, the party was approached by the barman from the tavern. He congratulated them on seeing off the annoying busker, and asked if they could deal with some monsters in his basement.

“Oh gods, giant rats” groans half the party.

“Mountain lions” laughs the other half, who’ve all played Oblivion.

“Actually, skeletons” says me, just to prove the rat-claimers wrong.
The party agreed to rid the Death of Rats tavern of skeletons in exchange for all they could drink. They quickly advanced into the tavern’s cellar, and meet the skeletons in battle.

The battle would have been a lot easier if Robblestienberg hadn’t set light to half the cellar with a mis-placed flask of burning oil. Realizing the cinematically-explosive alcohol in the burning barrels would soon be the end of them, and the barman would probably take a dim view of their actions even if he survived, the party quickly jumped down the grating in the floor that the skeletons had presumable entered through.

Robblestienberg, of course, waited to the very last second, so that he could be backlit by the explosion as he jumped.

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