THE THURSDAY NIGHT D&D GAME FOR MONTY AND THE BOYS
By James M. Ward
It was Thursday night at Monty’s house and most of our group had gotten together for our weekly D&D game. That night there was a feeling among all of us that something really big was going to happen.
*
The group had decided to take down our low level characters for the first adventure and we were getting out our booklets, graph paper, metal figures, character charts, and copies of The Dragon to begin the game. Then Freddie walked in and we all groaned our displeasure. It wasn’t that any of us disliked Freddie, it was just his love of strange things that made him hard to bear. Monty, our best DM, was always willing to go along with our new ideas, but Freddie’s were really the pits as far as we were concerned. Once, long ago at an Origin convention, Freddie had been rummaging in a trash can and found a copy of some strange D&D magazine nobody had ever heard of. In this thing was a plan for a sword being that could be a player character. Freddie went wild over the idea and immediately wanted several. All the rest of us, in an effort to stop such madness, made Freddie play clerics, but Monty loved challenges. Freddie got his wish and now had two player characters that were swords. One was a low level thing and the other had become a high level creature that no one could figure out (especially Freddie, the user). With Freddie coming along we started out with problems before we left the Gold Dragon Inn.
*
I had decided to take my little thirteenth level wizard. He was kind of weak, having only sixty-nine hit points and eighteen’s in all his categories save strength, but I liked him and liked to use my few spells as opposed to artifacts and tech devices.
*
Ernie was going to take his thirteenth level wiz with the pet demon. He and I had both decided to rough it with these little guys. Robert was going to take his twenty-second level fighter with his magic armor, sword, rings, misc. magic items, and artifacts. Jake was going to take his permanently hasted iron golem (no one but Jake and Monty had figured out how that was accomplished). Tim and Brian were going to take their Storm Giants with their hand catapults (those Tractics boys were always doing things like that).
*
Dave wanted to take one of those strange “hoogies” (it sounded something like that) but we were able to talk him out of it, in favor of one of his twenty-fifth level clerics. Tom complained that all he had left were demi-gods and so we made him start out with a new character at the twelfth level. It served him right, having to start out all over like that. Mike was going to take his tenth level gargoyle (as long as his character could fly he never cared what it looked like). Will was the only other guy there that night and while he had a bunch of good characters he decided to take his fifteenth level hobbit thief. We all tried to talk him out of it, but he had made up his mind. Little did we know that his choice was the best of the lot.
*
Ernie, the adventure before, had gotten a weird golden chain that displayed strange magical properties. After legend loring, contacting higher planes, wishing about it, and communing we had found out that all we needed to do was all step in an oval made by the chain and we would be teleported to a land of great treasure and even greater danger. Monty had really been tricky with this one and wasn’t telling us any more information than he had already given out. It sounded like just our cup of tea and we were going to take our little characters down first because we felt a need to scout the area. So, we all put our figures in an oval on the table (made out of gold thread) and regretted every second after. We appeared on a frosty plain of ice and snow with four Storm Giants swinging their weapons and Monty chuckling something about “minor guards”. We heard the sound of three clubs and a magic sword going smash, smash, smash, and chop. Mike’s gargoyle was a grease smear on one of the clubs, Tom’s Monk was down to one hit point, Dave’s cleric was really hurting, and Jake’s golem had one of its arms cut off by the vorpal sword. Robert clove one in two with his sword while Ernie’s and my cold rays took care of two more (and the sword, we found out a bit later). The last one was missed by the rest of the group, but it didn’t miss me for thirty-six points of bruises and nicks. With the next round, we were able to finish the giants off before the last one did any more damage. They didn’t have a copper coin’s worth of treasure on them, and we weren’t pleased. After a bunch of cure spells and a raise dead on the gargoyle, we still hadn’t figured out what to do about the golem’s arm. We just let it go and traveled on. Tim and Brian put on some of the dead guard’s clothes (which everyone thought was a good idea) and we were on our way towards a batch of caves.
*
The caves circled a huge crevasse and so naturally Freddie (the sword) wanted to go to the bottom (the worst thing we could have done). We all magically or physically flew down to the bottom by a series of giant snow drifts which became huge “white puddings” as we hit the snow covered earth. The things started chewing on everyone but the stupid hobbit and even Jake the golem was taking damage. After we blasted every one of the things with spells and five or six artifacts we had them down to a batch of ice particles. They didn’t have any treasure either and we had just started to grumble a little bit. We traveled around and weren’t getting anything but frost bite (according to Monty), when we came upon a warm cave. I think we entered the cave more for the thought of warmth than anything else (we always play our roles very seriously). The sight of the five Remorhaz didn’t please any of us. I will not go into the gory details, but when all was said and done we killed all the monsters and had a golem that was a piece of slag and two giants that were smoking ash. We collected those guys and threw them into our (or I should say Ernie’s) portable hole. Naturally the treasure those things had was ruined in our magical blasts. Our little grumbling was turning into loud mutters. We left the bottom of the crevasse and explored some caves until we hit frost giants. We killed them off in batches of four and five and while most everyone was taking their lumps, none of the giants could hit that stupid hobbit. We got used to having boulders by the dozen thrown at us and unfortunately we also got used to finding little or no treasure. Monty kept chuckling something about lowly guards under his breath and that didn’t make any of us feel good at all. Finally we struck it big and were struck several times. We ran into this huge batch of frost giants. There were males, females, kids (fighting like ogres), and a pack of white dog things. Well, I should have known better, but the thought of all of those boulders they had been tossing at me since we hit the first batch didn't please me. I said I was going to take on the dogs while everyone else handled the giants (that was my first mistake). The other guys started taking their chops or tossing spells in Ernie’s case. The battle was shaping up to be a good one as more giants started streaming in. The Frost Giant kids seemed to concentrate on Will, as the hobbit, and while no one said it, everyone was very pleased to see him take some of the heat off of everyone else in a way that might cause him a little damage.
*
I rushed up to the dogs and summoned a seventh level monster from a spell on a scroll I had, figuring it would take the heat off of me (my second mistake). Those blasted dogs breathed cold blasts at me and did all sorts of damage on my poor body. While my beasty was materializing, I sprinkled invisibility dust on myself; figuring that there were plenty of other enemies for the dogs and they wouldn’t try to search me out (my third mistake). Those twice blasted things started sniffing me out and heading towards the corner I had run to. But it was too late for them, my creature had arrived. I had managed to summon an ancient red dragon. The dogs clumped together and breathed, but they were not effective on that old red thing. The dragon killed the dogs with one breath and while it turned to me for more directions, I was directing it towards the remaining giants.
*
Dave was a red smear on a heap of boulders; Mike was a part of eight or nine giant clubs; Tom and Will were just in the act of giving their dying chop; Robert was in pretty good shape but five giants were pressing him hard; that dumb Freddie had been almost unstoppable and Ernie and his pet demon had accounted for the king and queen of the giants. I headed the red dragon towards Freddie and his friends (with a subconscious death wish to Freddie’s sword) and I directed a hold spell on four of the giants trying to squash Ernie. I got them all in a real lucky spell and Ernie took care of the batch that all hit Robert with their clubs and killed him deader than dead. While the dragon had taken care of the giants with his breath, in Freddie’s area (doing more damage to Freddie than all the giants together), the giants had taken care of my dragon with their dying chops. The battle was finished by a well placed fire ball by me. After taking a few healing potions and collecting our dead in the portable hole, we looked around for treasure. The giants had a big batch of chests and several groups of things like skulls, horns, weapons, and rugs. I went for the skulls and grabbed a beautiful gem encrusted one that immediately started to shout for some creature called a “Drow”. We got the skull quieted down by smashing it into a lot of pieces. We checked everything else out and got a horn of Valhalla, a horn of bubbles, a flying carpet, and several hundred thousand gold pieces worth of gems. We were thinking of leaving when two black elves came in.
*
There was one in the form of a beautiful elven princess with jet black skin and the other was an elven fighter type. Freddie charged in at the woman trying to cleave her in half. Monty smiled again for the first time since we started this latest battle and we knew we were in trouble. Monty said the Drow princess grabbed Freddie, negating all his magical abilities, and snapped Freddie in half. We all cheered, we couldn’t help ourselves! When something great like that happens, even if it hurts the group, you have to give the deed some credit. We started throwing spell after spell to no avail, the princess was too tough. She stood there doing nothing as yet and we started getting very concerned for our welfare. Her companion simply stood at her side with his sword drawn, obviously there to guard her. We had made our saving throw against several death rays and hold spells when we both had the same thought. Ernie and I shouted out that we were tossing charm spells at the fighter. Ernie got the thing and he directed it to fight the princess. She snapped his sword and killed the fighter by turning him into ashes. She then turned to us and we took that as our cue to teleport out (without Freddie’s broken sword, of course). After all was said and done, the loss of Freddie’s sword was the best thing that happened on the adventure!
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