Easter 2013

Easter, and yet again SVT don't show Jesus Christ Superstar, what the hell? I need some good music with some sort of religious theme at this holiday. So instead I did what I usually does during easter, looks at movies. Since I don't have a TV it's of to Youtube and the internet looking for interesting movies (mostly animated). Well, it started already during Thursday with The Neverending Story which I have on DVD. Childhood movie with really good music and visuals. Then it went on with The Last Unicorn (sadly not available with the swedish voices), Fire and Ice, Elfie of the Blue Sea (recommended, but you need to know another languish than english, since I saw it the first time in french with swedish subtitles and now it finally exist on Youtube, don't understand most of the dialouge but I remember the important parts and it will not leave an eye dry in the end), Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer, Transformers the Movie, Dunderklumpen, Puss in boots around the world and  Animal Treasure Island. So you can guess I was swimming in chocolate, tears, adrenalin and nostalgia during this weekend. The question is, when did all of this began? Why do I associate easter with watching movies, and especially animated movies?

It began many years ago. Swedish television usually shows an animated movie and others during this time. Why? I don't know. There is a specific memory of a movie that I watched as a kid. I sat down and watched. Most of the story has disappeared, but a specific memory lingers, the very beginning. A tree in the forest, the bird flees in panic, two is left behind watching their nest. The mother scarred and hides in the nest while the father tries to calm her. A predator birds appears killing both. The rest I remembered was the main characters being a red and blue bird.  It has haunted my mind for years and probably everyone has this moment. This short snippet of a movie, a series, music, but you can't pinpoint it. You don't care if it is good or bad, you just wants to find out where you saw it. The feeling of satisfaction when you do. When you see the same movie, or just a picture of that particular scene, and the lightbulb goes up. Satisfaction. You can probably guess what I found this easter. An easter miracle. I found that movie, a danish animated movie called the War of the Birds. So I watched it, sadly not in swedish, but in norwegian. 

Was it good? It has certain merits, but overall it was kinda boring, but scenes of dread when the vulture appears were kinda good, and many birds and ends with a traitor bird battling the vulture and setting both to flame. What it needed was... better animation (but that's subjective), clearer motivation and character moments. Cause as it stands now... it's boring at times. It's pushed towards children which you can see on the humor and the naiveté of the main characters. Had it been a much more mature main character it would have been good as he battles the plague of the forest that killed his parents and his foster mother. And as I mentioned, the art styles work for a children cartoon, but had they gone a different route it could have been special. At least I don't have to keep it in mind, especially since I record it here. So have fun with lost memories until next time. Also, as you probably can guess, there will be no DnD today and there was none last friday either (people seems to have a life with their families instead for playing DnD, talk about wrong priorities), but if nothing happens we will be back this friday, traversing the stars.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate

 

Since there will be no DnD this weekend, how about some other games? Like, say, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate? Got it this Thursday and finished it yesterday. Played for around 11 hours to 100 %, so a bit short, but while it last it gives you a cinematic epic experience. It start with a short basic level with Gabriel Belmont, main character from the first game in the reboot series. Then you continue to play the game with Simon Belmont, Alucard and finally Trevor Belmont. The story takes place mostly over a 30 year period (excluding the Gabriel Belmont section that would take the game over a 60 years period). All character have the same basic attacks, but differs in special attacks and abilities. For example the sub-weapons, Simon has some kind of Molotov cocktails (replacing the usual holy water sub-weapon) and axes while Trevor has a boomerang shuriken (instead of the cross or is it still called the cross?) and electric bomb (which I can't recall if it has some counterpart in Castlevania, but they remind me of a special attack from the Mystical Ninja 64 game, coincidentally another Konami game) and Alucard has flying bats and the stop-hourglass (instead of the stop-watch, but that's just pointing at words). To be frank, I hardly used them when not necessary, except the electric bomb since it was pretty useful against aquatic enemies and especially in groups of them. The reason for this is that they are much slower to use than in the original games, there you could just throw them, here it is recommended to charge them first, but if the enemy hits you, you have to restart and the combat is to fast for it to work and the enemies requires much more damage than in the old games.

Anyway, each character explore different parts of the castle, some may overlap, but due to the different abilities of the characters (Alucard and Trevor's double jump ability mostly) they need special ways around the same room, at least compared to Simon who can't double jump and must rely on the whip much more (although, since the other characters have the same ability it feels like he's just the weakest of them, especially if you go back to his chapter to find the last percent of hidden chests after playing through the others), but since he's mostly the first character he's a good introduction. A pity that the demo they released started with Trevor who is the last character you play through the game. Combat is fairly easy with button mashing working most of the time (should probably mention that I'm not that into these kind of action games), but you need to use combos with certain enemies that prefer to block (as I side note, I HATE the vampires with swords and wings in this game). Blocking and shield crashing is the most useful and should be mastered if you even want to attempt to fight certain enemies or any boss at all. You also have certain attack combos, limited to the 18 level cap you have. Here is also the reason why I'm not that interested in these kind of games, I end only be able to perform the most basic attacks. Either I can't remember the combo or my fingers can't act correctly. Doesn't need it here since blocking and dodging goes a long way. Although that was on normal and easy setting.

Graphically? Looks great. It looks dark, evokes the gothic setting perfectly and you can see backgrounds and enemies without problem (compare it to Castlevania: Circle of the Moon where the limited light of the Game Boy Advance made it really hard to see anything). Musically it's alright, it works for the setting and changes if you are in combat or not, BUT... it doesn't feel like Castlevania music. None of the old tunes are there. This soundtrack evokes an epic cinematic experience, but where is the catchy tunes from the old games? Where is Simon's Theme? Trevor's or even Alucard's? Why not use them as battle themes if they don't fit the mood of the castle? It's the same thing in movies when they remake old movies or revive franchises that have iconic music and they just throw it out. Transformers, Conan and I have great fear the same goes for Robocop. Just a small tune over the credits maybe or you can do like Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword by playing the song backwards. Or they might have done it and I don't know about it, but since no one has mentioned it I assume no.

All in all, it does a great job evoking that cinematic experience battling hordes of undead, clinging for your life riding the back of several creatures and the combat works perfect for it and when you pull of combos, blocks and dodges it feels amazing and the music ties it all together. Well worth to play, but it feels a bit short and the only re-playability value is a hardcore mode. Nothing like switching characters for the different chapters or combining your own vampire hunter (or even play as Dracula himself). Oh, and before I forget, does the 3DS offer something special for this game? Yes, besides the 3D effects (which works fine) you can now leave notes on the map for places you can't access and need to come back for. Makes it so much easier than roaming the halls until you stumble upon a passage that needed the double jump for example. You can probably use it to write down the hints the dead knights gives you as well since you have 50 notes and I at most used 12 or so for the different parts. Only wished I had finished the original Lords of Shadow, but I don't have TV at the moment and the game is packed down at my parents home. 

Dragon Encounter Of The First Kind

Sadly, I'm not allowed to take the form of the God of Hellfire. We arrive in the tunnel through the portal from the Feywild and I head out scouting the crossroad from were we came. I arrive and can see the walls being patrolled by, what I would assume is a beholder. From the fortress a dark cloud is forming above it and tentacles emerges and grabs an alter with the mind-flyer from before and a tied up drow woman. I check the last tunnel we haven't visited and finds side-tunnel, a rock blocking something and a chapel. I go back to the others and take them with me to the tunnel. My cousin the battle-minder half-elf runs toward the chapel and opens it. Inside there is a sermon in honor of his god, held by a dwarf. We walk in and he and the pixie on his shoulder take a seat. I find nothing of value and leaves to check the other passages. My faithful servant the dragonborn follows me... after he steal 5 golds from the collect. The bard catches him and follows him warning him for this behavior. They find me at the side-tunnel having found veins of ore, of gold and silver. So I stuffed my pockets. I turn to the stone and me and Zelakor (the dragonborn) pushes it out of the way. We find the tunnel continuing and a door with a sign of Tiamat on it. We open it and in front of us is a dragon... sleeping thankfully. We stand in shock and panic for a minute and then closes the door while I use my rapier to cut out "Here Be Dragons" on it. We then follows the tunnel.

My cousin and pixie follows the sermon and afterwards walk up to the dwarf holding it. They talk and learns that the dwarf is heading for Neverwinter and they offer him to join us since we are headed there, after we have taken care of the witch. Before leaving the battle-minder throws in 5 gold coins for blessing (in game that is, in reality it was to outweigh the dragonborns bad behavior). They deduce we have traveled into the tunnel were the stone has been moved and finds the door and promptly leaves it alone after reading the text on it. They find us standing and looking down a set of stairs toward a light source of some kind, debating that it might be a trap. Which it isn't, was just a torch. We follow the stairs and finds a dwarven city. We enter, led by our new friend who leads us to a tavern were we start a feast. Me, the bard, dragonborn and dwarf drink and tell story all night long and wakes up with some new stuff. I got an axe with my name engraved on it, the bard had new armor made of straw and the dwarf a hat with a pike. Apparently some drunkards had caused some mayhem and we scared them away and taking their things away from them. Free stuff is free stuff. We head out again and back to the crossroads. Debating several things on the way we fail to notice the beholder staring at us. We quickly decide the best option is just to run. During the escape the beholder fires at the pixie and damage her. Realizing that it is keeping up with the others and I would probably be one of the few survivors we are saved by a squadron of drows who had the unfortunate luck to patrol that area at that time. I return the book to the old wizard who inform us that our little dungeon exploring had taken a week, but at least I didn't technically leave the basement. 

Onward to Daggerfall (Daggerfold?) to find the witch. My cousin decides to lighten his chest and tells of times under slavery and a quest for a relic and if we would like to follow. Since blood is thicker than water I am the first to the call giving him my sword, bow AND axe. Sadly I just realized that I could have used that. We arrive to a town in decay, several blocks demolished and filled with thieves. We are greeted by a man playing the harp, dressed in red. Apparently a Harper. He asks us were we are heading (our bardic friend has  been here before and have a contact in the town) and decides to join the bard and meet this friend, if we want it our not. The rest of us are shown a suitable tavern and pays for lodging while the bard and the harper finds their contact. A house that, when they open the door, spews out smoke. And here it ends. Unfortunately this mean a weeks hiatus as well due to people doing other things meaning there will be neither a Friday or Saturday session. Wonder what I shall write about then?

A Tale For Bob

Battle as we start of this session. The psychic and me start of and takes cover behind some metal debris. From the other corridor five small mutants with cattle prods appear. The assassin who is heavily wounded takes cover behind some other debris. And then it happens, the psychic tentacle lady who is behind yet another cover of debris fails to maintain her psychic powers checked and, by accident, reverse the gravity 80 meters around her, which include all in the battle, so our cleric just swims closer to me and our psychic behind cover. The big jailer type with automatic weapons float around over a bridge. The psychic uses his powers on one of the mutants (lets call him Bob) and stay where he is while I had the brilliant idea to use my own cattle prod to ease the fall. The gravity is reversed back and every one falls undamaged... except me who fail my + 10 (which I was the only one to get) agility test and falls on the cattle prod, taking 3 wounds. Good start of the game. After this we stay behind cover while firing at the mutants. The jailer mutant on the other hand step forward and pushes poor Bob prone and then start fire at us with their guns while the other mutants close in on our position. The assassin kills two, me another and the psychic the fourth leaving Bob. Bob rushes forward trying to stun the psychic, but fail. Then the jailers once again fire. One jam his weapon while the other fires wildly against us, missing us but alas poor Bob fell before our very eyes. Outraged the psychic rushes forward together with the cleric and gives the mutant jailer a beating. I and the assassin takes care of the last.

When all that cooled down we surround the hiding place of the tentacle lady who... slits her own throat. Huh? Ok, that was easy? To make sure she is dead I shock her with the cattle prod. Stone cold. We begin searching for clues, but since none of us have search (except the scum, who couldn't be here today) so I roll twice, fails both times. The psychic on the other hand gets a good roll and finds a piece of paper, written by the frankenstein monster who walked the corridors and harassed the assassin. It gets more and more confusing. Our attention turns to two tubes with some liquid in them. We don't know what it is and the psychic who tries everything he got fails after rolls after rolls. I look around for something to transport the liquid in and does my best roll tonight, 6 degrees of success. A pity it was about finding a glass container. I pick it up and fills it with the liquid... and the GM is evil enough to throw a agility test on me, which I fail. So my hand is burned and scared and I got 4 corruption points for that. Which makes the reason for me taking the container worthless since I wanted to see how it reacted with flesh by throwing it at the tentacle lady. The other says I at least shall check it out. The others take cover and I pour some of it on the creature. It comes alive and tentacles start wriggling around me. The ribbin characters is frozen in fear (the cleric and the psychic). The assassin begins firing at it while I drops the container and start charging at it with the cattle prod. The battle takes three turns, the creature fails to grapple anyone and the assassin deals the most damage and finish it of. Pity, since I failed most of my rolls, even if I succeeded to hit once, the damage output was so small it didn't register and I couldn't shock it. Even more pity was that I had a chance to kill it if I had succeeded on the last one and given enough damage. It had 2 wounds left... and the damn assassin got to kill it.

While this is going on the tech-priest is crawling through the ventilation shafts to assassinate the hub keeper. He arrives at the room, enters and reconfigures the ventilation and door and back in the ventilation the keeper arrives and sit down. The tech-priest then locks the door and turns of the flow of air while using a air-mask (or whatever it's called). Almost an hour later the keeper tries to go out due to the lack of oxygen, but can't and falls to the floor. The tech-priest arrives and finishes him of with breaking his throat and the escapes (now... had it been me I might have actually checked the drawers and computers for information, maybe tying him together with the spies on board, but that ship sailed). Also, this strengthen my theory that when we are alone we are lucky as hell. He leave the ventilation, but a friend tagged along. One of the leather spiders stuck to his neck and he pulls it away after a short struggle and proceeds to crush it with his axe. He then stumbles upon some binary codes and copy it down to his data-slate (sp?). He prays at a mechanical cult shrine when disaster strikes. During the jump out of the warp something happened that caused severe damage to the ship. He began searching for someone that could decode the binary, he ended up at the hangar where he wasn't allowed passage so he gave the slate to the guard who took them to some high ranking mechanical person... who decided to fly away with it. Shocked he headed back to the shrine to contact the ship and it turned out the binary detailed the whereabouts for some secret weapon and that some cult really wanted their hands on it. The computer he used didn't last long after that conversation.

Back to us, the ship starts to shake. Against my better judgment I take the others to the friendly mutant, against the opposition of the cleric who hates mutants, as that was the closest safe haven I could think of. Sadly, when we got there the roof had collapsed and all I could find of the mutant was a pool of blood. Our back-up plan was to head for the armory. We get there and after some persuasion we get let in wait out the chaos. We heal and stock up on some flamer fuel and meet up with the tech-priest. We divide once more, I head for the archive to see if I can get any information on the names of the spies, but nothing. The tech-priest buys a new data-slate and rerecords the binary and the ribbins get us some seats on an escape ship. We leave the ship and then jumps of at a imperial cruiser were we are picked up by the inquisition that introduces themselves to us and gives us a final test before we are official members. And here the session ends.

I'm The God Of Hellfire

A bit late, but here is the sunday Dungeons & Dragons adventure. We left of in a small room where our temporary leader wanted to jump the emperor and take his sword away. We persuaded him not to, but he didn't like it, so he decided to not like them that much. So me and the dragonborn had to step up as the negotiators of the party. The wizard we looked for had been absorbed by the wife of the emperor to survive after being attacked by some monster. The emperor would agree to release the wizard IF we would do him a favor. To save his adopted-sister from some dryads. We agreed since we hadn't any option. Our wizard was to weak to do it and killing the wife in hope of releasing the wizard was dangerous for us. So we agreed. Next up was the meeting with the wife. Being the silver-tongued elf I am, I... well, "am very polite". We all get some gifts (maybe not the battle-minder, I can't remember, but his attitude as temporary leader probably didn't help), feeling like when the Fellowship left Lothlórien. What did I get? A never-ending quiver of +1 fire damage arrows. Hell yeah, now I'm playing with fire.

So no worrying about arrows again... except when I'm on a stealth mission in the dark (since they have a small glow at the arrow tip)... or when it's flammable material nearby... or the creature is immune to fire... or I get something better. We gear up and head for the cave of the dryads. At the entrance we see roots falling down all around. I take a look and sure enough, the entrance floor is filled with bear traps. I rearrange them so that we have a straight line of escape, but those who put them there would be severely confused. We head in and find a "room" (more like a larger area) with several barbarians caught in vines. Uthgardian barbarians by the way. Damn, those barbarians seems to be everywhere, even in the Feywild. We release them and they tell us they were caught by the dryads and that they are down the tunnel. I checked the entrance and yet again, another set of traps. The wizard and I then had a small contest of disarming those traps the fastest. The wizard won they said. Damn.

Then we hear it, the cackling laughter from the tunnel. The cackling of a hag. Shapes is seen in the dark. Some of us see these shapes on the walls behind the vines. I fail my roll, even with 14 to perception. So I don't see them. Then it begins. Surrounded by the dryads they attack. Five of them. When my turn appears I focus on the nearest and fires away. The first flight of arrows hit and set the dryad on fire... the seconded begins to set the vines on fire. The vines that goes into the tunnel were the hostage is... oops! A bit more urgency on our fight. We battle on, three of the dryads burn while we hack away at them. I stand toe to toe with my prey who burns in agony so it just shrieks while I fire volley after volley of arrows at it, setting the flames higher and higher HAHAHA YES, BURN BABY BURN HAHAHA!... *ahem*

They are all killed, quickly the wizard cut away the fire from spreading into the tunnel while our barbarian talks with her fellow barbarians who killed a couple of wolfs during the dryad battle. Kept our backs free so to speak. The conversation ends with them calling her back to their tribe, meaning that she has to leave us. Our big meat cleaver/shield that has killed many of our enemies, a sad moment for all. As a last thing together we all rushed into the tunnel where the laughing hag. Arrows flew and the other rushed her with swords and axes and then ending it with some magic missiles. The hag flew into the wall, stone cold death. Her room had a bed, a table and a chest. The dragonborn opened the chest and found around a 1000 gold pieces. He tried to lie about it since his greed is huge, but since I keep an eye on him. Ever so suspicious. It's nice with a servant that has to follow your orders through magic. The others look at the table were a birdcage is situated. The dragonborn picks it up and starts shaking it at the little pixie inside. The battle-minder takes it from him and opens up the door and asks about where the step-daughter of the emperor is, sorry, I mean adoptive daughter. Turns out this pixie is the one (who will be played by the former barbarian player).

 We bring her home to her father... I mean brother and she persuade him to let her go with us. The ritual for separating the wizard and wife was complete. The bard wanted to know a special song to aid us in our adventure and to his help an eladrin elf comes out. Turns out it's the dragonborns brother. Mystery tightens around this character. Which reminds me, I need to return the book I got from the old man in the tower. Anyway, they talk and the brother scorns at the dragonborn for being cursed and blames his doings and had to face the consequences. After all that we leaved and entered the portal we came from and the wizard closed it behind us. We had now left the feywild and we once again found us in the dark with drows and mind-flyers roaming the caverns. Let us bring... FIRE!!!

Mutant Wars

So the guy playing the assassin is back, but instead the tech-priest is gone... he needed to be put together again as a small retcon so that the story made any sense. Anyway, the assassin wakes up and finds himself hanging upside down on a hook that slowely takes him to what he would believe is the furnice. After some acrobatoc skills he turns himself around and free his legs while holding the hook with his hand. He then drops down on the conveyor belt below him. Trying to use his cat landing skills... he fails. He still survive, but his wounds are not pretty. He begins to move himself toward where he came from to escape whatever it is behind him. Then a mutant attacks him. He fires his rifle and then takes out his sword for close melee combat. An epic sword fight emerges in front of our eyes... If it wasn't for both combatants missing their rolls. He finally slice the mutant open and it stumbles down below. He finally leaves the room and enters a corridor. He hears boots coming toward him so he jumps in to a storage room. Curiosity gets the best of him so he open the door... failing his stealth rolls and he looks upon the most fearful face ever. It's basicly a frankensteins monster with his face consisting of three different faces. It looks upon him and wants him for spare parta. Scared shitless the assassin closes the doors and locks it. The door barely holds for the strenght of the mutant, but it gives up after a while and leaves. Still gripped by fear the assassin exits the room and pulls out his rifle and heads the opposite direction. He then stubles upon a room that is supposed to have some mashine, but its missing. There is also a woman there which he tries to talk to, but he quickly falls under a charm spell of some kind. She beckons him to come closer and he drops his rifle and walks slowely toward her. They stand face to face and he can now see the tentacles for fingers she have and her face melts away and relieves yet another mutant.

I on the other hand was in room with the friendly mutant. After some awkward silence and failures in communication I take my leave and head into a second hallway. And I find myself in some kind of furnace room. Below me an intense heat strikes at me, lowering my possiblities to act. I look around and see a ladder leading upward and I start the climb. I see a platform and suddenly a vile smell hits me of rotten and sickly meat. A mutant guards my onöy escape so I pull out my revolver, aim and one-shot the bastard who falls from the railing and explodes below me, almost causing me to throw up. Really, when I'm solo I'm the most awesome character ever. Out-running a servitor, escaping from jail and killing two guards. I head in to the corridor.

The others heal themselves up and after some time decide to checkout the mutant levels. Mostly pursaded by the fact a psychic is running loose on their decks and is guarded by servitors with guns. At the door toward their destination they are stopped by two normal guards. The cleric shouts at them to open the door and so they enter. At this point our psychic feels the presence of the mutants heading toward their corridor and me stumbling around around the corner. They rush forward to get me, drags me into a storage room and we preper for battle. First the psycic and scum throws granades at them, close the door and we take cover aiming our weapons at the door. It becomes a massacre. The doors flings open and they are meet by a hail of bullets from the two automatic guns in the party, the psychicbthen uses the flamer on the rest. Then a big hulking jailer arrives and is shot with shotgun and revolver bullets. I wasn't even allowed to fire... and I was really close to kill him. Dammit. At this moment the psychic feels the presence of the tentacle lady and of we go... right into a defended position with a jailor carrying a heavy stuber (or whatever it's spelled). And here I'm gonna shine with a 12 in initiative... and the enemy goes first and the first thing they do is shock me with a cattle prod, stunning me so that's my turn waisted. The others take cover behind some sandbags and the scum drags me with him. Doesn't help though since the stubber quickly makes short work with the cover. Next turn I and the psychic takes shelter behind a iron pillar, does that help? No, I'm getting pinned and my willpower save is halved to 26. Guess my roll? 27. We mostly fail to damage this guy and would have been dead if the mutant hadn't jammed its weapon. So I got my willpower back and a bonus to roll so below 76 is fine... 77! FREAKING 77! GOD DAMMIT! So the others beat him up and in the end I got some bullets and another cattle prod. How nice. We then hear the screams from our assassin friend and we rush forward into his current position while a hoard of mutants arrive from the opposite end and the assassin is fighting the tentacle lady. Here... it ends! The session I mean.

Through Another World

So, in the tunnel, barely escaped the drows from the city. We walk forward and finds a portal which leads us to the Feywild (a place where the magical races like elf, eladrin and gnomes originated... I think). Looking around I hear the sound of a creature coming toward us, an owlbear. The battle-minder intimidates it so it leaves. Our plan of action was to quickly get our bearings so that we could find the way back (thank GOD for my explorer theme giving +5 for navigation checks together with a nature skill on 14 making it 19, I shouldn't be able to fail that roll when the times come, but knowing me anything could happen). The dragonborn decides to improvise and cuts down a tree... who screams in agony as it fall. It was alive... dammit. Anyway, what's done is done. All it ask for is that his life ended at once and not being used for firewood. Which we grant him. Not finished the dragonborn climb the tallest tree and see a city in the distant. I follow him up to get the bearing so that we doesn't get lost on the way.

We arrive without trouble, unfortunately the guards of the summer city stop that. We are after a while let in and check out for some information. The battle-minder and wizard learn small things about some Ice Queen and are afterwards harassed by a gnome until they agree to take on a mission for the god Corellon to find a lost wizard who has been kidnapped by either the Ice Queen or the Frost Emperor. Due to the wizard being a Corellon servant he jumps at the chance. Meanwhile I found the adventure guild and got lucky to find a really experienced adventurer who I asked for information in the way of slaying dragons, black dragon in particular. He tells me to either curse it so it doesn't regain it's normal form (which is the opposite of the promise I gave so we can rule that out, especially since I'm on a quest to kill witches left and right) or use dragonslayer and hit him in the face. At the current situation he recommends to try change his evil ways by being a good master. That was thrown out of the window we all got back since I override his displeasure with going on the wizard search quest. A priest meet up with us and takes us to a wagon tied to a griffin. Flying time.

We land in a winter gripped landscape. A colorful city on a lake to the left of us and a cold dark city in the mountains on our right. We head for the mountains. We seemed to have arrived to the Ice Queen's city. Guards behave more or less like they did in the Summer Council city. We bluff us in as on a diplomatic mission establishing contacts between the Neverwinter Nine and the Ice Queen's domains. We reach the castle and are stopped by the guards once again and they demand all our weapons. The wizard of course get away with his staff since it's a "walking stick". I try to bluff my way through calling my bow a walking stick (a bit inspired by this strip), but I fail. The others give it up as well, but not the dragonborn who succeed in his diplomacy test, but the DM goes all out and summon four guards holding their swords all around his neck so one wrong move means a head shorter. Seeing that he couldn't win he gave them his sword. We enter and introduces our selves for the Queen. After some talking we find out the whereabouts of the wizard... he is in the other city. So we pack up and head down the mountain. Entering the city we find out that it isn't as the other one. Here the people seemed to be more lively, but forced into being nice. We get to the palace, the guards take our weapons and we enter. 

The Emperor sit on his throne with a woman standing by his side. At the emperor's lap lies a sword. Both the woman and the sword emits some powerful magic, the sword even some necromantic power. The emperor acknowledge that he knows about the wizard and afterwards the woman bows forward whispering in his ears. I roll a 20 on my perception check and hear every single word. I whisper in the battle-minders ear all I can hear so that we are all on equal footing. After some more talking the emperor escorts us to a side room for more questions. It ends in us finding out that the wizard has been absorbed by the woman in order to save someone in the Emperors family. Meanwhile the sword drains his energy. The battle-minder wants to jump the chance to take the sword away from him with the dragonborn and barbarian by his side while I thought on blocking the door. Although, since none of us have any weapons and the door is the only way out we discard the idea. And here it ends. Will we save the wizard? Will we return home to our world? And the most important question of all, will I find a means to easy defeat a black dragon who is a fellow companion?

Breaking Away

So back in the cell the mutants arrive with electric staffs. They electrocute the assassin and drags him away for some torture. Before leaving they also send a shock through my body (which was an idea from our cleric so when she is in a similar situation my revenge will be sweet). The reason they choose the assassin was due to the player not being here so that was a convenient way to get him out for this session. Before and after this I also tried to break the bonds that tied me down as well as sitting in a better position without my face making an imprint on the wall. Of course all I manage is to get loose one hand and fails on the other. I hear someone coming from the corridor and quickly make sure that they can't see my hand and grabs the revolver that I'm still carrying. In comes the jailor with a electric staff, laughing and telling me that fun is beginning and that they will pick me clean and eat me. He grab me and pull me up to his face, grinning. "Will it be fun?" I ask and he laughs even more answering that if being eaten for lunch is fun than yes. "You have to pick this first" I say and fire the revolver right in his face, blowing away his nose. He drops me to the floor and is blinded for a round. Without hesitation I fire another shot into his body, he collapses and dies. "Seems like you have to spend some jail time now!" (sadly I thought out better one-liners afterwards like "the menu has been changed" and "I can recommend the book "to serve Mutant").

Laying on the ground, still tied up with sounds down the corridor acknowledging the shots, I look at the electric staff and uses it to cut the rope. I take the staff and run away away from the sounds down the hallway the mutant that saved us from the leather-spiders. Running, the small mutants follows me with their staffs. After a while I seemed to have shaken them, but right in front of me a long arm stretches out trying to block me while I with fast reflexes slide under it. From the shadows the helping mutant comes forward, moaning and walking toward me. I put up the staff between us incase he would turn hostile. He grabs it, pulls it out of my hands and throws it toward the wall, destroying it (of course I was pretty close electrocuting him). He walks forward again, holds out his hand and perform some kind of religious ritual, while the sound he makes turn into an old hymn. I answer him and he smiles and walks into the shadows, in to a hidden pathway. I follow him and finds a personal shrine or chapel. Lots of religious books with hymns and a large painting of a high-ranking clergy member. I look around and find a personal journal, belonging to the killed arch-adjutant (who, incidentally, is depicted in the painting). He writes how he tried to understand the mutants and even opposed the church ideas regarding them as doomed outcast whatever the case. He especially mentioned a specific mutant who seemed to be a priest before his transformation (obviously hinting at the one with me). Now I know the reason for his death, the next step is to rescue the assassin.

The others have finished of the psychic and his minions, but need to flee. The tech-priest suggest the mechanics which he ensure them would allow them sanctuary for a while. They head over there. The ribbins is sent down the ventilations to get them to open the doors and present them with an emblem from the tech-priest. They are allowed inside. The tech-priest is separated from others who are taken to custody for the moment. He meets with a captain who question him about killing the adjutant and afterwards says he's sorry for this and knock him out. The others rest awhile in the room until a servitor arrives, informing them that the tech-priest is scheduled to become a servitor himself and then leads them toward him The tech-priest awakes in the "execution chair". He tries to get some information out of the one who attacked him, but fail. He proceed to lie in order to sow seeds of deceit between the fractions that apparently is involved in this. It backfires a bit since it makes the captain jump the gun and decide to shoot him instead. At this moment the others burst in. After a short, but bloody battle they succeed to knock the captain out that punctures his lungs from the broken ribs they have given him. The scum, tech-priest and cleric severely wounded. They quickly gather some information and heads up in the ship to get rid of the keeper of the habitats. Since they are in no condition to put up a fight without taking a huge risk on losing a life they decide to use all the swarms of vermin to chase them down into his office to do the deed. And they still don't miss me or the assassin, some friends huh.