I haven’t talked a lot about the AD&D game I’m in lately, in part because we haven’t played in a bit and also because I don’t always want to play-summary all of the games I’m in. But this deserves a highlight for badass boss fight.
First, a little background. This game is running an extremely impressive homebrewed megadungeon whose conceit is that it was created by a powerful godlike mage as a refuge for an elven tribe, but it has since fallen to crap, is overrun with monsters and the elves are just barely hanging on in one corner of the second of several levels. Earlier, we’d helped the elves by clearing out a pocket of Lizard men, just kicking the shit out of them and their king, but there was still a dragon somewhere on level 2 and an army of troglodytes in the south.
Somehow we managed to smooth talk our way into the troglodyte lair, “We’re here to offer our services to the mighty dragon king! Oh, you hated the Lizardmen? We killed those guys. We can kill the elves, too!” The human(oid) guardsman took us deep into the heart of the troglodyte territory, and we passed probably a hundred or so of them on the way, and I’m just thinking “aw, man, we are so screwed”. We’re at last taken to some wizard guy who is at the tail end of a sermon about how the Lizard Men will soon be destroyed, as will the elves and soon the dungeon level will be ruled by the dragon and its troglodytes. We give our bona fides and demand an audience with the dragon so we may do him homage before killing the elves. The wizard brings in a huge white dragon.
Our elf wizard makes a wisdom check, realizes something is up with the dragon, says “I will light and burn incense and oil in your honor, great dragon lord!” and to our surprise, he chucks a flask of burning oil that hits the wizard and the dragon. I hold person on the wizard, the druid and his pet tree-thing go for the dragon and the paladin runs the held wizard through. Druid and his pet both score big hits on the dragon. 1 round. The dragon shrinks down, dead, a polymorphed ice lizard. The troglodytes watching the entrance run.
We go down where the wizard had led the fake dragon from. Damn if there’s not a real white dragon, laying asleep (open roll) on a pile of treasure on the far side of a ravine. We come up with a crazy cockamamie plan: the elves had given us a magic carpet earlier. We quietly fly over the ravine, drop off the druid, paladin, and fighter/cleric (me), and the wizard flies over the dragon. He lights 5 bottles of oil and drops them all on the sleeping dragon. The dragon dies horribly after suffering 10d6 damage, but in its death throes it catches the elf-wizard with its breath weapon.
We declare that we will rez the elf whatever it takes*, because anyone that badass deserves it. Two boss-fights, two rounds. The DM was pretty amazed we pulled it off. We’re pretty amazed we pulled it off.
We’re going to wrap up the second level of the megadungeon and put that game on hiatus to do some Star Frontiers after the holidays. That might well scratch my sci-fi itch, but I kind of hope we’ll finish the megadungeon someday (I think our DM only has some of the level below us written up), because I really want to “solve” the mystery of the place.
Things are about to take a shift in the DCC game I’m in, too. We’re leaving the originally conceived urban setting to do something of a Westmarch style campaign in the wilderness. I’m really going to miss the urban dungeon, because it’s so unlike anything I’ve played in and has been a lot of fun and quite the wild ride, but I’m always interested in trying new stuff. The downside is that my old character won’t make much sense or be very useful in a wilderness game. Plus a lot of the character objectives I’ve set for her are based in the old location. I’m considering leaving her behind and using my alternate (a decent spellsword). He’d certainly be more useful in a fight. But the thief has been so much fun!
I can’t make up my mind, so, I’ll leave it to my readers:
Cirsova 
I’d say leave the cutpurse behind for now, to use as a contact should you ever return to the city. If her identity’s wrapped up in the city, you can always have her “grow” with the adventure, but she’ll end up being “different.”
You might regret the changes, or you might not. But my money’s on letting her “NPC out” for a while. It’s nice to return to a PC after some time has passed.
–Dither
That’s what I’m leaning towards. She may very well end up an NPC villain or power player, depending on how things work out for her in the city (she’s started murdering gang members who are heavy into prostitution and slave trade in her neighborhood while looking for info on the snake cultists the original party was sold to). I’ll miss the XP (64 XP feels like so much in DCC!) and being level 2, but the spellsword could very well start out stronger at level 1 than she is now.
I could have her give Marak the ancient tomes of evil and the book of vile ritual that she can’t do anything with, so there’s always that!
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