It’s, in the DM’s words, not so racist game! Tonight the group has a guest who has taken on the role of Calinai’s warder Bullock.

Inferian: This is the game where the DM almost regrets letting me play a wilder.
DM: Almost?
Inferian: If I hadn’t played a wilder, I couldn’t have taken thrallherd, and you would have been sad if I hadn’t taken thrallherd.
DM: That’s true… Benar is the most fun I have running this game.

Last time, the group had burst in on a group of ogres or giants, and so they begin setting up the battlefield the way they’d left it last time, while reminiscing about old games.

Calinai: Don’t we have a collection of tables to block off doors with? …bastard stole my throne.
Inferian: And then the next session we played, you destroyed my castle.
Calinai: That was hilarious. Every game was just me… he plays a game, screws over my character, so when I ran a game, I screwed over his character.
Inferian: You got your throne BACK though.
Calinai: I did.
Inferian: You had to kick ass of that vampire monk to get it, but you got it back.
Calinai: That was the only thing we used that dimension hole for, getting my throne back. A portable hole, and that’s all we put into it.

Initiative is rolled! No one is quite certain of what these creatures are until Sioneva actually shows up to roll Knowledge(nature), at which point the DM tells them they’re an ogre sort from a kingdom along the Blight.

Sioneva: Are we going to have to fight them? Are they acting warlike?
DM: (laughing in disbelief) They appear warlike and their body language, from the looks on their faces – you feel like if you flee they won’t pursue you…
Inferian: But Diplomacy is not an option.

Sioneva, who unsurprisingly acts first, unsurprisingly crits for 38. Calinai, up next, fires off a lightning bolt into the fray. The inevitable debate over whether to use Fortitude or Reflex saves against them erupts, as Inferian asks Sioneva in-character.

Falgrim: All of a sudden they start zipping around the room at sixty feet, “Well, I was wrong. I apologize.”
DM: The one that looks Iglar plants the… uh…
Inferian: Plants his tower shield!
Calinai: Plants down his turret. His arrow-launching turret.
DM: Sweeps his sword to the side and grunts in the Giant tongue, which—
Calinai: Oh, ooh. Dimension Door and appears behind us. “There goes our plan.”
DM: (malefic laughter) It sounds like, to your ears, “Formation Delta.” He turns around and raises his shield on his arm…

The ogres begin retreating up a long ramp that they appeared to have smashed through earlier. Benar ducks into the shadows!

Inferian: He rolled a 47 on his Hide.
Sioneva: Jesus.
DM: They might not see him. 47…
Calinai: He IS the wall.
DM: You turned Benar into fucking Rambo. Benar whips out a cardboard box, hunkers down underneath it….

Lars discovers the lion he’d laboriously rebuilt his character to have is large, and is furious. Calinai declares that Lars is just this close to making Lion-O, despite the fact that he is thinking of He-Man the entire time. Inferian, for the first time in forever, is enervated from his wild surge.

DM: No way.
Inferian: Yes way.
DM: You’re enervated.
Inferian: Yes, I rolled a 92.
DM: (wicked giggling)

Inferian promptly rolls a natural 1 on his attack roll, and the DM gleefully describes him shooting Falgrim in the back with his energy ray. Inferian immediately rolls sadly well on damage.

Inferian: 19 points of fire damage.
Falgrim: Is there a save?
Inferian: No, it’s a touch attack.
Sioneva: Did you shoot me?
Inferian: No, I shot Falgrim.
DM: Shot him in the back.
Calinai: He’s starting with a great opener today…
DM: Falgrim turns around. “FALSE Dragon!”
Falgrim: “Agh! What’re you doing back there!”
DM: Benar, confused, says, “Lord Dragon, shall I slay the dwarf?”
Inferian: “No, shut up! There was a bee, you’re allergic to bees, right? I was saving yur life.”
Falgrim: “We’ll discuss it later…”
DM: Falgrim, your beard singed, your face black, your eyes red—
Inferian: I hit him in the back, how the hell?
DM: That’s a lot of fire, though.

An ogre misses his AOO, and Falgrim strikes for 41 damage to the ogre. The ogre, well-pummeled, dies. Lars surges forward, transposing places with his lion to put some pain onto a second ogre. Bullock uses White Raven Tactics on Falgrim.

Falgrim: Sweeeeeeeet!
Bullock: You did well last time.

Falgrim charges in, but eats the AOO thanks to his charge penalty.

DM: 17 points of damage.
Falgrim: Ooh, good hit.
DM: If this thing had some kind of understanding in-game as to what Armor Classes were, it’d be like, “I can’t believe I did that.” And your attack, sir.
Lars: How much damage did you take?
Falgrim: 41.
Lars: You took 41?!
Falgrim: I did 41 to him!
DM: Jesus, if these things hit that hard I WOULD be wiping you guys.

Falgrim’s blow takes out the second ogre, and it too slumps into a silent death. The rest of the ogres head up the ramp, refusing to engage the heroes.

Calinai: So Formation Delta is, two people die and three people get away.
Lars: Formation Delta! Sacrifice yourselves…
DM: Well, if they’d rolled better in the initiative order, that would have gone much differently.

The PCs prepare for the ogres to burst in from some alternate angle or with some technique, but… nothing happens. Eventually forced to acknowledge that to deal with the ogres, they must walk forward into their preparations, the PCs… do what they do best.

Inferian: (pointing to a webcomic) See, this is where Samus Aran and Eggplant Wizard teleport into the final level of Final Fantasy IV. …You really have to read it, it can’t be explained.
Falgrim: Why WAS King Hippo purple?
Calinai: I assume there was some color discoloration, he had a crappy TV…
Falgrim: But he was fighting in the opening cinematic. And was orange. But he was blue in the cartoon. With big purple nipples.
Lars: What?!

The ramp heads forward for a bit before abruptly becoming much steeper, preventing the PCs from seeing into the next room easily. Lars’s lion slowly moves up the ramp to the point where it’ll be visible.

Falgrim: I’m waiting for it…
Calinai: Dude! He’s made a Hulking Hurler! Watch out for big rocks!
Inferian: Oh no – the most broken…
Lars: 24 on Move Silently…

The DM at last puts down the minis on the map, showing the ogres arranged in a large semicircle in a fairly wide, deep room.

Lars: As soon as he sees us appear, he yells out, “Formation Delta again!”
Calinai: Through another wall!

The DM continues to add to the map, placing rubble and boulders around each of the foes.

Calinai: I knew it! Hulking Hurlers! Those are rocks!
DM: Those are rocks.
Calinai: Those are huge rocks! Two, three feet big!
DM: They’re not huge, but comparison-speak… Comparisona…. It’s not a word, but by comparison, to these things they’re like what the rock Andre was holding in Princess Bride was. Big enough to hurt you. That is what you and the smilodon – we need a name for the cat right away, because I’m just going to keep saying bullshit.
Calinai: Smilodon – I don’t believe you! I don’t know why. It sounds too retarded. They’re just sitting there going, “What should we call this big cat? Looks like it’s smiling!”
Lars: Snarf.
Inferian: Falgrim, discipline him.
Falgrim: (slaps Lars upside the head)
Lars: Ow! Come on, man, help me think of something better.
DM: That is what you and Snarf see.

The players curse as the DM officially adopts the name Snarf for the smilodon. Lars, Falgrim, and the smilodon end up in place to see the terrain in front – and the three of them are blocking Calinai from gaining any meaningful LOS on the new battlefield. Inferian curiously glances at Lars’s sheet, to see if any of his spells might aid them.

Inferian: Oh, Neutralize Poison. It looked like Ancestral Poison.
Calinai: It will kill you and your past selves!
Inferian: You cast it on someone and slay their forefathers.
Bullock: Reverse patricide, killing everyone descended from you.
Lars: Am I allowed as a cleric to prep the same spell more than once?
Calinai: Yeah, you can prep as many as you want.
Lars: Fuck.
Calinai: You can prep a bunch of Create Food!
Inferian: Quickly, just cast. So many loaves of bread are stacked up it provides ranged cover…

The group relentlessly gives Brunt’s player grief about his hammer-throwing old-woman-detection trick. The lion at last advances over the threshold!

DM: Do you want the good news or the bad news?
Lars: Bad news!
Falgrim: It’s dead.
DM: It’s taken 33 points of damage from the 2 rocks that hit. The good news is, not all of the rocks got flung.
Lars: The cat…
DM: Snarf.
Lars: You know what, you can keep calling him cat, dude… Um.
DM: Well he’s making snarfing noises now that he’s had a couple of miniature boulders bounced off his head.
Lars: Yeaaaah…. He’s retreating, dude.
DM: Everyone hugs the wall as Snarf flees back the way he came. Inferian and Falgrim, make up for the cat’s cowardice!
Lars: Dude, he’s down to 11 hit points…

Falgrim, up next, takes the remaining three boulder hits. Inferian makes a comment about them ‘rocking’ his world, at which point a thrown die goes wide and bounces off Bullock.

DM: Welcome!
Bullock: It disappeared into the carpet somewhere.
Calinai: That happened a lot.
DM: Yeah, this is the Sarlaac carpet when it comes to dice. Once again, Falgrim, you know for a fact that you’re hearty enough to withstand a couple of rocks hitting up, but things hurled you way seem to almost magically strike you at critical points or gaps in your armor, of which there are almost none. All told, 53 points of damage.

The PCs re-evaluate their situation fairly grimly. Falgrim still has plenty of HP left, and has Share Pain running with Lars, but a strike like that will wreck pretty much any other character. Nevertheless, Bullock double-moves up to try to gain range.

Inferian: I’m going to try to solve this encounter, although I know it won’t work. I’m going to try to charm the leader.
Falgrim: But I wanna kill him!
Lars: Why don’t you charm someone else?
Inferian: Because the leader is a more effective use of my power that won’t work. If I charm the leader, maybe he will make the others stand down.

Sioneva moves forward and skirmishes for 19. Ogres hurl boulders at her in return; the DM evinces some difficulty in calculating the final damage.

Sioneva: Jeez, that’s a lot of dice you’re rolling there, DM.
DM: Well, that was the two regular rocks that hit you. This is the crit.
Sioneva: Oh my God. I’m gonna be rolling a new character.
DM: All told, that was 54 points of damage.
Calinai: Close your book and walk out.
Sioneva: That was half my hit points…
DM: TWO can play this game! I’m gonna forget this whole melee fighter crap and just have ranged people pelt you to death! How do you like THAT, Inferian?! Wait, you’re still hiding.
Inferian: I’m not hiding, I’m still coming up the ramp!
DM: That’s right, you’re crawling up to the battle. Benar’s like, “Lord Dragon, they’re dying!”
Inferian: “More loot for me – I mean, oh no!”

Calinai drops a cloud of Solid Fog, which in retrospect ends up inconveniencing the PCs much more than the giants, even though it does stop a lot of the ranged attacks. Falgrim checks his character sheet in the hopes of finding any answers.

Falgrim: Wait a minute! I have the Boots of Striding and Springing?! God damn it!
Inferian: Wow, how long have you been shorting yourself on the movement from those?
DM: Instead of picking up another pair of rocks… the Delta… jeez, I didn’t intend for that to be so bad… the Delta hefts his shield, yanks his bastard sword free of the ground, and assumes a readied stance.
Inferian: Benar hurls a Shadow Garrote at that one there. It hits, I’m sure.
DM: He does that now?! Jesus.
Inferian: I told you I took a level of swordsage for him!

Benar then rolls a 50 on his Hide check to creep forward, which embitters the DM for no real reason. Falgrim charges into melee; the ogre’s AOO does not crit him, hooray!

Falgrim: I rolled a 19… then I rolled a 20 to confirm it.
Inferian: Damn. No charming for him then…

The party takes a moment to explain the whole Thrallherd prestige class to Bullock.

Bullock: …so how long before you get a divine rank of 0?
Inferian: Well, when I get my tenth level of Thrallherd, I get my second cohort, which is basically the D&D equivalent of divine rank…
Falgrim: 86 points of damage!
DM: Even as his sword reaches out and lops another bit of your dwarven hide off, your sword goes up and under his sword arm—
Falgrim: Into the armpit!
DM: Into the armpit, and removing it.
Falgrim: Just carve out the armpit.
DM: The ogre’s mouth, his teeth gritted in pain as you remove your sword, he takes half a step back, slowly nods his head, aaaand… Inferian?
Inferian: Since Falgrim just critted the leader, I don’t think I’ll be attempting to charm him now. I rise up 30 feet, which I believe should let me see over the fog—
Falgrim: (miming Inferian’s head hitting the ceiling with a crunch)
Inferian: I SPECIFICALLY ASKED WHAT THE CEILING HEIGHT WAS THERE FOR A REASON.
Calinai: Illusion spell!
Falgrim: I just think it’s funny. Just how angry you got when I did it.

Four rocks hurl at Inferian as he fires an energy ray, which ends up maximized from his anarchic surge and thus deals 49 fire damage, frying it.

Bullock: I’m going to step out of the fog and see the guy I was charging at dead.
Falgrim: RAAAAA-uuuhhhhh?

Again, the insanity of the Thrallherd class is debated…

Inferian: I could literally build a wooden framework of crosses, nail my followers into a protective wall for myself, twenty-four hours later a bunch of replacements show up waiting to be nailed into the wall.
Lars: See, I want to use his mooks for all sorts of stuff. “Yeah, bum rush him!”
Calinai: It’s called alignment shifting!
Lars: Yeah, I don’t see the problem here.
Calinai: You are a HORRIBLE cleric!

Three boulders strike Inferian for 54 points of damage, but since he’s using Vigor/Share Pain on his psicrystal, all is well. The group spends a while abusing Inferian for doing this.

DM: At the bottom of the ramp, Cringer has his paws on his head, as rocks rain down after pelting Inferian.
Inferian: “Suck it up! You’re no mage-bred ghost tiger!”
DM: “Orko!”

Lars hurls an Earth Reaver spell into a pair of ogres, exploding the ground beneath them, while Bullock advances forward aaaand can’t do much because of the solid fog.

DM: They’re not.. robot… ro.. con—warforged-like or anything like that, but they’re highly disciplined.
Inferian: I love how many terms also coincide with the DM giving me a dirty look.
DM: What did I—
Inferian: Warforged.
DM: I was trying to think of the D&D term for robot.
Inferian: And when you came up with it you gave me a dirty look.
DM: It wasn’t intended to be dirty.
Falgrim: He can’t help it.

Falgrim gets pelted with boulders for 40 points of damage, infuriating him because really he shouldn’t be taking these hits. He also notes he’d be dead at this point if not for Share Pain with Lars.

Inferian: “Falgrim, you are forbidden from dying!”
Falgrim: “I’ll get back to ya on that.”
Inferian: “Forbidden!”
Falgrim: “I’ll get back to ya—“
Inferian: “FORBIDDEN!”
Falgrim: WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO do you serve?!

The favorite tale of countless men being dragged away from their families is brought up again.

Calinai: “Daddy, come back!” “IN THE SERVICE OF LORD DRAGON!” “I need you to help till the soil!” “NO! Serve Lord Dragon!” It’s horrible! All these families… “Where’s Daddy?”
DM: It’s still better than putting the sun out to avoid a minor inconvenience. A -1 penalty, “Ooops, sun, you gotta go.” I think that’s inconveniencing a lot more people. “Well, crops aren’t growing this year, because someone wanted to avoid a -1 penalty!”
Bullock: Hey, -1 can be significant.
DM: Not as significant as having no FOOD! For anyone! You guys are eating rocks and sand for the next year because someone doesn’t want a -1. You’re going to be takinga -4 penalty for hunger.
Inferian: I’ll just use Iron Heart Surge on THAT, and the hunger ends! Food appears!
Lars: It’s Jesus!
DM: And the sun falls, and your sins have wrought a weaking of the barriers between this plane and a demon realm. So at night, demons everywhere, tearing dwarves apart.

Falgrim continues to get wailed on, as the DM muses that he may have overpowered this ogre.

DM: He crit you with the shield spike, so it’s not going to be as much damage.
Inferian: As we see it protruding from the back of his skull.
Falgrim: “Don’t worry! I’m all right!”
DM: You take 16 points from the bastard sword as it shears away a bit of your arm.
Inferian: A bit of your arm and a bit of Lars’s arm, go figure.
Calinai: I wonder, if someone were to have a move that decapitates the target, does the shared damage take off the other person’s head?
Inferian: Usually that’s just an instant kill…
DM: 19 points as the shield spike swings forward!

Benar slips forward and deals a Mountain Hammer as a sneak attack, which is a damn lot of d6s as it happens.

DM: What’s the minimum damage he can deal out with this ridiculousness? At least he didn’t crit…
Inferian: Does a 27 hit? Then he crit…
DM: What’s the minimum here?!
Inferian: I’m working on calculating that! The minimum damage he can do is 25.
DM: You can remove him. This one, having not even seen the blade that entered his heart, a sharp intake of breath is all he utters and he collapses in a heap. Benar strikes true, proving his worth and his comedic value!
Falgrim: First strike, 39 points of damage. Second strike, 34 points of damage.
Calinai: Third strike, 57 points of damage… fourth strike, 94 points of damage.
DM: He’s still up.
Falgrim: Woohoo.
Inferian: 75 points of fire damage to the unharmed guy.
DM: 75? “Inferian… wins.”

Lars, up next, rolls a terrible heal on Falgrim. The DM promptly awards him a reroll to save Falgrim’s ass.

Inferian: He complains, he COMPLAINS because I rolled his stabilization chance, and look what he does!
DM: You killed me! It’s okay!
Calinai: He had gone past the denial phase, he was well into acceptance…
DM: I’ve been killed by him many – well, multiple times before. I’m used to it!
Inferian: Only twice, dude!
DM: Three including the one where you suspended judgment. Two and three quarters…
Calinai: He threw a flag on the play. You live!
Inferian: I dunno, the way this guy’s dishing out damage, Falgrim could still go down even after the heal.
DM: Precisely, that’s why there’s a Macguffin. I’m conceding I may have overdesigned the encounter, because this was designed with Treedon and his army – his fucking Noah’s Ark of summons in mind. That’s what the rocks were designed to remove. Treedon steps to the top of the list -- (pointing his fingers and making noises) Out come fucking animal crackers.
Inferian: He’s playing like a collectible card game…

Bullock attempts a trip, but fails and has to drop his chain to avoid a countertrip. Sioneva misses twice, to everyone’s disbelief. Falgrim realizes he has a crystal that’s given him DR this entire fight and has forgotten about it, leaving him 30 hit points up. Lars brags about his constant hitting on the queen of Noldor. Benar attacks another ogre for 45.

DM: You all are sick fucks. Falgrim’s cutting heads off… Benar’s collecting bodily organs... fucking Lars is hanging pirates and shit.
Lars: It’s good to hang pirates!
Inferian: Shouldn’t you BURN pirates? I mean, you can’t spell ‘pirate’ without ‘pyre’.

The longest silence EVER. Inferian then promptly crits an ogre on a maximized fire blast.

Inferian: I was trying to lowball it… honestly…
DM: Bullock no longer has eyebrows, as the fiery backblast is so intense.
Calinai: It’s hard to shine in our group with the Decimator over there.
Inferian: That was raw luck!

Inferian darkly predicts the DM will invent a ray-reflector spell, while Calinai questions if you can bleed from fire damage. Falgrim and the ogre leader engage in a final duel.

DM: You assume your stance, he assumes his. You cross! Your friends look on, wondering what’s befallen. Which one will fall.
Falgrim: No they’re not. They’re talking amongst themselves.
DM: Yeah, they’ve forgotten.
Falgrim: They’re high-fiving Inferian. “Hey man, come on down for a high-five for that incineration!” Meanwhile, I’m like, pshew pshew, cling cling cling cling!
Inferian: I offered to help, man…
DM: The ogre sinks to his knees. His sword falls to the ground at last, and he slumps over.

With the victory at hand, Inferian drops a message to the Sedai and her warder about that little engagement.

DM: You receive a terse response which amounts to, “Message received and understood”, and then transmission from their end ceases.
Inferian: I’m not certain why we bothered to keep them updated, I expected this to happen.
Calinai: What, they’re doing just fine, Golbez-style?
DM: Well, if you’d like to go fight everything yourself.
Inferian: I think we accidentally are!
DM: ACCIDENTALLY?
Inferian: Yes! Open a door, “Aww crap!”
DM: You found the stairway to level two, and you decided to double back and explore the entire rest of this level, don’t ‘accidentally’ me, dumbass. You guys are the reason this dungeon is still going on, don’t blame it on me!
Calinai: I don’t know if we have a target. We ran from an army into this castle, that’s what I last remember. Have we started looking for the horn yet?
Inferian: THAT’S WHAT WE’VE BEEN DOING!
DM: DOOOONESBURY!
Calinai: We could have passed it already!

The group abruptly runs face-first into the debate over whether the Horn is also a seal, which the DM says is absolutely not true. It gets bizarrely mathematical.

Calinai: I’m tired of this shit! Two and two is five for higher levels of two, then it’s not fucking two! Cookie plus cookie equal cake if cookie is made out of cake ingredients doesn’t make it a goddamn cookie!
Falgrim: But 2.4 you would round down to two, but if you add those together, it’s 4.8, and then you round that up to five.
Calinai: It’s--! (making a horrific strangled scream of pure rage)
Falgrim: Oh man, I didn’t realize it was this easy to piss off Calinai—
Inferian: HOW HAVE YOU NOT REALIZED IT WAS THIS EASY!? Falgrim, I eat Smarties in a pile and Calinai gets pissed off!
DM: Well that IS erratic behavior.

They loot the ogres! On the leader, Falgrim discovers a note, which his magical helm allows him to read.

Falgrim: “You are a big stinky-breath…”
DM: “Dear dwarves, the only holes you’ll dig are your own graves. Die. Sincerely, the human king.”
Lars: Come on, you liked it and you know it.
DM: It reads, “Time is short. Find us respite in the south at once and return once your mission is complete.” It’s nonseusn… it’s nons- It’s unsigned. But it is a very neat and orderly script in the Giant tongue. It’s not, “Me ogre write message to yoooou.”

Sioneva moves to listen at a door, and hears only the wind behind it. Interestingly, she doesn’t hear a wind inside, so the space beyond is most likely open.

Calinai: It’s where that dragon has taken rest. “They’ll never find me in here!” He just sits there on the other side of the door…
DM: That dragon really is a jack-in-the-box for you guys. Every door you open, “Is the dragon in there?”
Inferian: Hey, right now Benar is Rogue 6/Barbarian 1/Fighter 1/Swordsage 1.
DM: (sighing) Why don’t you get rid of the 6s and the 5s and have 1 of everything? One bard, one monk. One ninja.
Falgrim: A true jack-of-all-trades.
DM: One cleric.
Inferian: One blackguard.
DM: One artificer.
Inferian: One paladin, purely to get yourself a blackguard.
DM: One hulking hurler. Benar grows 50 feet!
Calinai: Master of Many Forms.
Falgrim: Master of Masks.
DM: One displacer beast.
Inferian: One totemist. One truenamer, I don’t know what I was thinking there.
DM: One level of dwarf.
Falgrim: What is this, first edition rules!

Behind the last door they hear a rhythmic rumbling, like bowling balls hitting an alley! The group vows to continue on this at their steady one-room-a-session pace until they finally effing finish god damn it.

Inferian and Calinai: Big money! Big prizes! I love it!