A few days after the fact, here are photos from the recent Warhammer 40,000 Weekend I held at Casa del Thiel. It was fun, as always, to see my good friends Donn and Tonya again. The bout of stomach flu was rather less fun.

As usual, my Sisters underachieved. Can anyone remind me why I chose one as my primary army one of the trickiest to play? Oh yeah, it was because I thought flying nuns were funny.

Happily, Donn and I had the chance to combine our Tyranid hordes and crush Tonya’s defending Space Marines. Snicker snack!

The Sisters deploy amid Donn's impressive scratch-built Mordheim ruins.

Tyranid warriors burst through the wall!

I knew I should've taken that left on Imperial Boulevard...

Little known fact: Space Marines love to circle dance.

My Canoness gave as good as she got versus the Hive Tyrant, but ultimately went down swinging.

Tyranids mass for battle.

Tonya's defenses were strong.

These scout snipers proved to be irritating. They also proved to be tasty! Yum!

Parking regulations are cruelly enforced.

Activity Fun: Spot the Space Marine!

Dave Games Warhammer

It should be a surprise to no one that I was one of the founding members of the Hobart High School Dungeons & Dragons Club*. Each Saturday morning, about twenty of us took over the basement of the Hobart Public Library for a half day of imaginary violence.

Here, courtesy the HHS yearbook, is the sole photo I have of me In flagrante dungeon…

Note that I was both wearing a Star Wars T-shirt and using an Empire Strikes Back school folder as a Dungeon Master’s screen. Yeah, I was stylin’.

What’s truly scary is that I’ve just realized that all these years later I can still immediately identify the D&D adventure being played by the two virgins in the background: the infamous “Queen of the Demonweb Pits.”

All this is my way of pointing out that I am indeed an old-schooler when it comes to dungeoneering. And now, nearly three decades later, I’m running a twice-monthly exercise in Old Tyme D&D I’m calling “The Tower of Mad Mungus.”

In my last update, I noted that some of the less likely members of the D&D bestiary were blamed on experimentation by a mad wizard. I decided that it was high time someone met him.

So it is that our party of adventurers have found themselves in the chambers far below Mungus’ tilted tower. Having defeated a fierce owlbear, they pressed on into a series of caverns.

Their first challenge was a cave overgrown with mushrooms. Large mushrooms. Mushrooms that smelled like warm, freshly-baked bread. When disturbed, they blasted a cloud of spores into the surrounding area. Unfortunately–or perhaps fortunately–the heroes never learned what effect those spores may have had, as they managed to safely bypass them**.

In a maze of twisty little passages, all alike, they found that certain sections of the floor glittered with bluish crystal. Those peering into this “mirror crystal” found that they could see portions of the tunnels otherwise out of sight…and that a monster was looking back at them! In a manner understood by no one including myself, the clawed insect/lizard was able to fire its poisoned spines at them from its lair elsewhere in the caves.

Hunting the sniper, they were beset by a bunch of young kruthiks and their pissed-off parents.

And now, a word from the Dungeon Master:

“Despite my stated intention to provide an old-school D&D experience, kruthiks are from a much later period in the game’s evolution. I included them for two reasons: 1) The game itself seems uncertain what they are. The 4th edition Monster Manual keeps referring to them as “reptilian,” even though they both look and behave much more like insects. They have a “hive lord,” for Pelor’s sake. So they seemed to fit the theme of creatures produced by madness. 2) I have an awful lot of kruthik miniatures.”

Having hacked their way through the skittering, spiky menace, the party next found themselves in a large grotto divided by an underground river and dotted with stalagmites and stalactites. Rob, my fellow old-schooler, heard the magic word “stalactites” and immediately began searching the ceiling for piercers.

“As I’ve previously noted, the piercer is one of the silliest 1st edition monsters. A mollusk which closely resembles a stalactite, the piercer lurks on cave ceilings, waiting to drop on its prey. If it misses, it has no recourse other than to crawl sloooooooowly away and try again…much, much later. In other words, it’s a monster which is precisely as dangerous as a piece of loose stone. When 3rd edition D&D came along, it was replaced by the darkmantle, a squiddy thing that flaps down from above and tries to wrap itself around its victim’s head.”

No piercers presented themselves, but sure enough a flock of darkmantles dropped down. Many heads were engulfed. Our intrepid wizard was forced to fire rays of frost at his own noggin in hope of knocking loose a tenacious, tentacled terror.

And that’s when the piercers began to fall.

The first one missed, but Rob’s warlord was speared right in the sternum and lay gasping at the brink of death. Oddly, I believe Rob was actually happy about being laid low by a piercer.

It was looking bad for a few moments, but the good guys eventually won the day. Then, something completely unexpected happened…

Another piercer plummeted to the floor. And excused itself.

The creature explained that it had once been a knight polymorphed into its current form by Mad Mungus himself. Sir Pearce† spent the next fifty years waiting in the cave for a party of dungeoneers that could help him to break this terrible curse.

Rob has kindly provided his iPad sketch of Sir Pearce.

And that’s where we left things. Five defiant adventurers and one stouthearted, conical mollusk against the forces of evil! To be continued…

*aka The Grand Order of High Schoolers Who Were in No Way Likely to Get Laid.

**Or did they?***

***Yes, they did.

†I’m so sorry.

Dave Games Dungeons & Dragons, monsters

Yesterday we kickstarted my long-dormant Dungeons & Dragons campaign. I was shocked to learn that our last play session was more than a year ago. I knew it had been quite a long time, but that’s epic-level procrastination on my part.

We’d left our heroes in the middle of their trek to the tower of the wizard knows as Mad Mungus. Thought to have been long-abandoned, the crooked structure recently had shown signs of life. A hooded figure claiming to be the wizard’s servant showed up in the town of Boswin. Days later, a weird river beast rampaged down the docks. Some speculated that the mutated creature had swum downstream from Mungus’ old abode.

I picked up things with the party finally nearing the tower. In a forest clearing, the adventurers were attacked by stirges: bat/bird/mosquito things with a taste for the red, sticky stuff!

The flying suckers weren’t the true threat, though. That came in the form of the dreaded “land shark” which had been attracted from underground by the vibrations of the battle above. Better known as the bulette, this burrowing behemoth was once famously described as “the result of a mad wizard’s experimental cross breeding of a snapping turtle and armadillo with infusions of demons’ ichor.”

Slaying the predators, the group settled down for the night. Their sleep was interrupted by a host of unusually friendly bullywugs, who invited them to their village of Frogton. Rip Reeep, chief of Frogton, told them that their own community had been attacked by a creature much like the one that had been seen in Boswin.

Avoiding the front door of Mungus’ tower, the heroes instead looked for the underwater waste pipe from which the river freak had emerged. They emerged in a refuse room off a main hallway. The corridor was lined with a series of elaborate stone arches, one of which had apparently collapsed on the head of a previous dungeon diver. While wary of the apparently trapped hall, they greedily picked up the gold coins which had fallen from the dead fighter’s purse.

Unfortunately, one of the coins was attached to a wire! The section of corridor upon which the party stood abruptly slanted at a steep angle, while oil sprayed from a concealed spigot. One of them became a helpless victim of the slick chute, traveling several hundred feet underground in seconds. And below, a hungry owlbear* awaited.

Rather than see their wizard pecked to death, the others voluntarily slid down the chute. The battle was long, bloody and punctuated by angry hooting.

We left things there, with the party stranded deep below the tower. With no obvious way out, who knows what mysteries and horrors await?

Well, I do.

*The owlbear was originally said to have been “probably the result of genetic experimentation by some insane wizard**.”

**It’s just possible that there’s a theme at work.

Dave Games Dungeons & Dragons

The other, non-a cappella reason I was largely incommunicado these past couple of weeks was that I was prepping for Winter War, Champaign’s annual wargaming convention. Unlike many past years, when I only showed up long enough to participate in the auction, this time I signed up for three days of events.

I played:

• Age of Conan (a Risk-like strategy game set in the world of Robert E. Howard’s barbarian hero)
• Heroscape (a rules-light wargame set on a massive board with a mixture of snow, lava and swamp terrain, plus a big castle in the middle)
• Doctor Who (which I thought would be the new role-playing game based on the TV show, but was actually a terrible, old Games Workshop boardgame I used to own before I happily got rid of it for its awfulness)
• Battlestar Galactica (everyone’s favorite “who’s the secret Cylon?” boardgame, with the “Pegasus” expanded rules)
• Warhammer 40,000 (a tournament event of the popular tabletop futuristic wargame)

Age of Conan was enjoyable, though I think I’d hesitate in adding it to my collection. I already have a bunch of games that involve pushing plastic soldiers around a map of the world/galaxy. Plus, it’s expensive ($80 SRP), and perhaps a bit too complicated for a night of casual gaming. My Aquilonian empire got off to a crummy start, unable to generate more than a couple of soldiers while the Turanians were out making diplomatic woo to all their neighbors, but by the end of the game we were knocking on the doors of Cimmeria itself and I managed to take second place.

My friend/co-worker Deane and his daughter were among the Cylon suspects who played Battlestar Galactica. For the uninitiated, BSG is a semi-cooperative game in which the players are characters from the TV show trying to survive frequent attacks by Cylon space fleets and sabotage by certain members of their own group who are secretly working for the other side. This was the first game of BSG I’ve played in which I was one of the Cylons…and it was also the first game in which the Cylons failed to stop the human fleet from reaching their destination.

As for the Warhammer tournament…well, I’m coming to that.

First there was the game auction. I love the auction. It is–no joke–one of my favorite things each year. This year I took a vorpal sword to my game collection and unloaded a storage bin full of stuff. And if that had been all that happened, it would have been enough.

But then there was the Box.

The Box was an oversized Sterilite container chock-full of plastic gaming miniatures. Mostly Dungeons & Dragons, but also Star Wars, Heroscape, Heroclix and Mage Knight. There were even a few lone stragglers from Creepy Freaks, Dreamblade and Horror Clix, not to mention a few zombies from the Zombies!!! boardgame, a Lego skeleton, a Darth Maul toy and, inexplicably, a dry erase marker.

And when I saw it, I said, “I will walk out of here with this box.”

The Box.

I wound up paying a mere thirty bucks for it, which was a steal considering that I would’ve gone as high as sixty and still felt good about it. I also bought a big bag of Heroscape terrain pieces (presumably from the same person, as it was a similarly random assortment of stuff) for $15.

The Bag.

That evening I pieced it out. There were 360 D&D figures, 88 Heroscape (without their army cards, but still) and 54 Star Wars. Lots of rare figures, too, including a Huge Red Dragon and a couple of Rampaging Wampas.

Contents of the Box.

Contents of the Bag.

I sorted out what I considered to be the dross (including all of the Mage Knight minis) and sold it the next morning for ten bucks to a guy who just wanted some fantasy miniatures for his kids. Net cost: $35.

They say that money cannot buy happiness, but they did not bring home a metric fuckton of plastic fun.

Sunday morning brought the Warhammer 40,000 tournament. I hadn’t played 40K in a couple of years, and had never played with the current edition of the rules. I was kinda nervous about it, and spent a lot of time in the preceding two weeks relearning the rules and adding some fiddly bits to my Sisters of Battle army.

Turned out that I needn’t have worried, since I was one of only three people who signed up. That was okay, though, as I wasn’t really in it for the tournament anyway. I just wanted an excuse to blow the dust off my space nuns and get up to date on the new rules.

"To battle! In the name of the Emperor!"

Good thing too, as I got slaughtered by the other players’ Space Marines. The only game I won was the the third one, and that was because my jetpack girls were able to “capture the flags” and get them back to my side of the board. Turns out that my army–which is based entirely around what I happen to have in my collection–isn’t really up to fighting a fully tricked-out Space Marine force. It was disheartening to see gal after gal fall under what seemed to be a never-ending stream of long-range fire. Still, it was okay, as I had no intention of actually winning.

The cave tunnels were especially frustrating for my jetpack troops.

However, I did win the “sportsmanship” award, which ought to be amusing to anyone who has gamed with me on a regular basis. Granted that I’m far from the poorest sport I’ve known, but I certainly shouldn’t be getting any awards for it.

The event organizer also graded our modelling and painting skills*, and that was when I dearly wanted to say something that would’ve cost me my sportsmanship recognition.

Look, I have no illusions that I’m any great shakes as a model-builder. When I was a kid, I made my dad build and paint all of my monster models.

But when I think about the state of my abilities when I bought my first set of space nuns to where I am today, I’m very proud of what I’ve managed to accomplish over the years. I’ve become much more confident and more likely to experiment with modifications and conversions.

*That’s actually pretty common for events based on Games Workshop games, as modelling is such a big part of the hobby.

So I was pretty annoyed when the organizer went down his painting checklist:

First off, I really wasn’t bringing my army to show off my mad painting skills.

Plus, even though I realize that what I’m asking for here is an “Everyone Gets a Prize” prize, I feel as if I ought to at least get some credit for the progress I’ve made. And for bringing such an oddball army as Sisters of Battle when everyone else had boring, ol’ Space Marines.

And finally, while the winning army was more technically proficient, Marines–most of whom are encased in relatively featureless ovoid armor suits–are not nearly as tricky to paint as Sisters. Battle Sisters are 1) smaller, 2) insanely detailed and 3) less likely to cover their faces with helmets. (I hate painting faces!) I mean, really…figure skating and diving give points for degree of difficulty; why not wargame modelling?

So, even though I don’t regret participating in the tournament, I don’t see me ever doing it again.

In the end, I had a great weekend overall. For the first time in far too long, I felt energized and ready to take on the next week! (Maybe I’ll practice my painting.)

Dave Games freakin' awesome, nuns, Warhammer

In the early days of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, there were two basic types of dragons. Good dragons had metallic scales: gold, silver, copper, brass and bronze*. Evil dragons had a color theme: red, blue, green, white and black.

Bahamut the Platinum Dragon led the metallic contingent, but his opposite number was even more fearsome: Tiamat the Chromatic Dragon. Whereas Bahamut had to make do with a single head, Tiamat was graced with five, one for each of her colorful kin.

Tiamat was one of the chief antagonists in the ’80s Saturday morning cartoon adaptation of the game. There she was the rival of the show’s archvillain, the demonic Venger. She made a significant appearance in my favorite episode, “The Dragon’s Graveyard.”

The series’ premise was that a sextet of modern-day kids were transported into a mystical realm and armed with magic weapons which transformed them into rough analogues of typical D&D character types. Venger wanted their weapons to beef up his own powers, and so spent much of the first two seasons plotting against the children. But in “The Dragon’s Graveyard” he took things too far and gravely injured their pet unicorn. (Don’t ask.)

The kids, having had it up to here with Venger, decided to finish the fight once and for all. But to do so, they needed the help of Tiamat. Fortunately, their magic items could open a portal to her home, the Dragon’s Graveyard.

They confronted Tiamat, only to discover that their weapons were substantially more powerful in the graveyard, not coincidentally the place from which they originated. While the Dragon Queen refused to do the chidren’s dirty work, she offered to teleport Venger to the Dragon’s Graveyard, where their enhanced abilities would win the day.

And sure enough, they kicked Venger’s deviled ass all over Dragontown, a scene I found very satisfying back in the day. Their leader Hank prepared to make the killing shot against their helpless opponent…then released him instead. The demon asked the Ranger why he didn’t finish him off, to which Hank replied, “If I did, we’d be no better than you are. We’ve beaten you, and you know it. Do you understand, Venger? I didn’t do it for you, I did it for us!” In hindsight, I suppose that “we’d be no better than the villain” thing wasn’t as much of a philosophical breakthrough as it seemed at the time, but just the same I thought it was a good message for the young audience.

Tiamat is still very much a major player in the Dungeons & Dragons pantheon, proving that five heads are better than two.

*The latest edition of the game replaced the two “alloy” dragons, brass and bronze, with iron and and the fictional metal adamantine. This was in part because it was felt that alloys didn’t fit the scheme, but mostly because gamers could never remember which were brass dragons and which were bronze.

Dave Games Dungeons & Dragons, monsters, Tiamat

Yesterday marked the high water mark of my geek year: my annual road trip to Gen Con Indianapolis. This gamer gathering has come a long way since I attended my first one at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside back in 1978. These days it’s one-quarter trade show, one-quarter bazaar, one-quarter costume show and one-quarter your mother’s basement.

While costumes aren’t as much of a focus there as they are at such geek gathering as the San Diego Comic Con, there were certainly enough on display. Though in some cases I wasn’t entirely sure they were costumes; a lot of folks came as “Woman Wearing Plaid Skirt Over Leggings with Skanky Top and Tattoos Covering the Rest.” I think that’s an anime character. To be sure, there were also a bunch of recognizable anime characters, as well as a smattering of superheroes, video game personalities, generic fantasy get-ups (think cloaks and/or pointy ears) and, for some reason, a guy wearing a business suit and ski mask.

I only took one costume photo, of a woman dressed as DC Comics’ mistress of magic, Zatanna. I’ll let you guess why.

I also saw far too many corsets. One example of extreme corsetting had her breasts pushed out so far that they resembled fleshy platters. Seriously, I think she had a spread of cheese and crackers up there. It looked neither comfortable nor in any way sexy.

The costumes were not my reason for being there, though. Neither were the game sessions. I can play games at home. No, I go to Gen Con for the shopping!

My first stop was the Fantasy Flight Games booth, with the express purpose of purchasing a pre-release copy of the “Pegasus” expansion for the Battlestar Galactica boardgame. They must’ve been able to see it in my eyes, as they handed me a copy without my even asking. I also snagged their Bag of Cthulhus, because, hey, bag of Cthulhus!

Really, Fantasy Flight seems to be the centerpiece of the Gen Con dealers’ room these days. Their space was huge, packed high with stacks of colorful, expensive boardgames, and buzzing with demonstration tables. Meanwhile, Wizards of the Coast, makers of Dungeons & Dragons, might as well have put up a sign saying “We don’t really care anymore.” While they weren’t stuck in a corner as they were last year, they had only a few, sparsely-attended demo tables. Furthermore, even though there are several new D&D products coming to stores any moment now, they only brought a small supply that sold out right away. It’s strange to think that D&D used to be the wheel around which all of Gen Con revolved.

With my one “gotta” purchase out of the way, I started making the rounds. Privateer Press didn’t have any new Monsterpocalypse promotional figures this year, but I bought the strategy guide and map pack for the latest expansion of their giant monsters wargame. They did have a nifty diorama of MonPoc figures, including some of the new factions that will debut this fall. I’m especially looking forward to the Tritons (subs and sea monsters) and the Empire of the Apes (gorillas with jet packs!).

I always buy at least one game without a prior demonstration, and this year it was The Isle of Doctor Necreaux from Alderac. I’m not really a fan of “cooperative” games (ones in which the players team up to defeat the game’s mechanics), but I am a fan of pulp sci-fi.

Alderac also had a really slick-looking Raiders of the Lost Ark pastiche called The Adventurers, with a group of pulp heroes invading a trap-infested labyrinth. I didn’t watch the demo long enough to get a sense of the gameplay, but it’s definitely on my radar when it hits retail.

Another game that piqued my interest, if not my wallet, was Shootin’ Ladders: Frag Fest, which is a videogame-inspired battle royale played out on a Chutes and Ladders board. The same company, Smirk and Dagger, previously released a similarly-ultraviolent version of Candy Land called Run For Your Life, Candyman! It was the end of the day and I was down to just the last of my food money, so I left it for another day.

The only other complete game I purchased was Vapor’s Gambit, a “hoverboard racing” challenge. I gather that it’s not very good, as Troll & Toad was clearing out a huge stack of them for a buck apiece. But, as my wife has pointed out, I would take a piece of shit* if they were giving it away for free. For a buck, it was worth it for the pieces.

Mostly I go to Gen Con for the individual miniatures, random bargains and odd gamer paraphenalia. I didn’t buy as many dice as usual, but I did get a “carved,” Cthulhu-themed 20-sided die, as well as a giant, inflatable 20-sider. Then there was the plush baby Adipose from Doctor Who. (The Adipose are aliens composed entirely of fat collected from unsuspecting human donors, but they sure are cute!)

I ran into several gamers I know, including my good friend (and former Urbana-ite) Chris Dinkins. We met over a bin of D&D miniatures, and he helped me dig through the heap to find several _______ figures (name withheld because my gamer group will have to fight them one day soon). Chris and I had a nice, long chat.

All in all, it was a good trip. People didn’t seem too cranky, and I found the aisles easy enough to navigate once I ditched the ridiculously-large Fantasy Flight Games sack. (Still, people, leave your babies at home!) I only got into one potential scuffle, with an overzealous convention volunteer who kept insisting that I go all the way around the auction area to the official exit when I was standing five feet from my checked backpack. It was the only game I actually played yesterday, but I am pleased to say that I won that round.

*Correction: Vic tells me that what she actually says is that I would take a hot turd if it was free.

Dave Games Battlestar Galactica, Dungeons & Dragons, Gen Con, Monsterpocalypse, Zatanna

Top row: Otyugh, Purple Worm, Gelatinous Cube

Middle row: Hook Horror, Ochre Jelly, Bulette, Rust Monster, Owlbear, Carrion Crawler

Bottom row: Intellect Devourer, Shambling Mound, Kuo-Toa, Beholder, Mind Flayer, Roper, Xorn

Dave Games beholder, Dungeons & Dragons, gelatinous cube, monsters

A real-life Warhammer 40,000 Rhino transport, built to promote the next Dawn of War PC game.

Dave Games freakin' awesome, Warhammer

Last Friday’s session in my ongoing Dungeons & Dragons campaign began with the players breaking a cardinal rule of RPGs: “Don’t split the party.” Separating into two groups is bad for the DM, who then has to keep both subgroups engaged even though one isn’t “there” at the moment. It’s also bad for the players, who are much more likely to find their characters outgunned by whatever opposition their DM had balanced with a larger group in mind. Note to my playgroup: telling me that you’re splitting the party in a manner which suggests that you know better does not actually help.

So it was that the paladin, wizard and ranger went to check out the new shipment of goods at Marali’s Fine Imports, while the warlord and rogue investigated a report of a “beastman attack” outside the Punt & Pole Tavern near the waterfront. The previous day, a bestial humanoid had slashed the throat of a patron leaving the establishment and fled into the night.

Arriving at the tavern, they soon encountered Meepo, an enthusiastic, relatively innocuous kobold (a small, lizard-like humanoid) who had recently been kicked out of his usual pub after an altercation. Meepo fancies himself a brave adventurer, and that–plus his race’s worship of dragons–caused him to quickly latch onto the dragonbord warlord Kesek.

Meanwhile, Marali–a comely half-elven proprietor–asked the other group to talk to a shady character who had been lurking outside her shop the past couple of nights. The stranger was rude and gave them a bad feeling. He eventually ambled away but soon returned in the company of a sinister, hooded figure with eyes that glittered in the half-light.

The players asked about Marali’s recent shipment from the north, and learned that there was one item which wasn’t listed on the manifest. It was a bowling ball-sized, black sphere which had a mysterious sigil etched upon it: the mark of the long-dead “Night Wizard,” Tor Shok. They offered to borrow the sphere and take it to the Arcane Assembly for identification, but Marali was hesitant to let such a potentially valuable item out of her hands.

By this time, the two groups had reunited at Marali’s, but they soon split up again, with the ranger and rogue tracking the hooded figure through the dark alleys, while the others stayed behind to guard the store. This proved to be an error in judgment, as did Green Leaf the ranger’s attempt to “distract” their quarry by tossing down a magical bauble which flashed into a bright light.

Well aware that he was being followed, he led the pursuers into an ambush, as four human-appearing creatures came at them from two sides, their faces morphing into bestial features as they attacked. One of them slashed at Cynfael the rogue’s throat with its fangs and began to lap his blood. Things were looking grim, as the twosome were cornered.

Fortunately, Green Leaf’s frantic whistle carried to Marali’s shop, and the rest of the party was able to catch up surprisingly fast. (Brave, little Meepo was left behind to hold down the fort.) While Cynfael was temporarily brought down, the creatures were soon routed, each exploding into dust as they died. Green Leaf fired an arrow at long range and pierced the heart of the last, fleeing vampyr.

As the hooded figure had dallied to watch the fight, the heroes were able to follow him as he fled into an abandoned temple to Corellon. They burst through the doors to find him reunited with his fellow vampyr from outside the shop, and backed up by several skeletons and zombies which he summoned from the ruined crypt below.

During the battle, Tuk’-Ja the wizard proved a danger to his own friends through his overenthusiastic use of area effect spells, but eventually the minions were dusted and Daggas, the vampyr Death Master was cornered and beheaded.

As the heroes licked their wounds, an arrow infused with electricity struck the floor nearby with a crash of thunder. Another vampyr hung upside down from a bell rope, firing his magic longbow.

Cynfael scurried up a ladder and jumped for the hanging rope, while the other characters discovered a hidden stair. They confronted the powerful vampyr on the ledge outside the bell tower.

This unnamed foe was especially tricky, enshrouding himself in a cloud of darkness. However, outnumbered and outmatched by the assembled characters, he volunteered to throw himself from the ledge, smashing to the ground below…then inexplicably vanishing!

As our heroes reach “second level” at last, they still don’t know the purpose of the strange sphere, nor the extent of the vampyrs’ influence in Boswin.

But that’s an adventure for another day…

Dave Games Dungeons & Dragons, Meepo, monsters, vampires

Two things about today’s Foxtrot:

1) This is pretty much the feeling I had when I was digging through my miniatures for Friday night’s D&D session and realized that I only had one vampire.

2) I would bet cash money that this is the first time the Sunday funnies have namechecked a Warhammer Khorne Bloodletter.

Dave Games Dungeons & Dragons, geek stuff, Warhammer