Last time, the PCs has been beaten up by werewolves. Pan returns to the game after being called away.

Pan: Sorry, I got a text message saying I had to watch something immediately. Turns out it wasn’t that important.

As always, the players must take time to refresh themselves as to how 3.5 works, which explains why everyone except Aliarra has taken to 5E so fervently. Cissy helps.

Cissy: Here, take this health potion. Oops, it was acid.
DM: Why is it green and bubbling?
Cissy: Don’t worry about it. It’s special healing.

Muttering prophecies, the group puts itself back together and begins to march once more. A mile further down their path, the fog becomes more cohesive, almost like a wall.

Aliarra: “Who knows what’s waiting for us on the other side.”
DM: Who knows?
DM and Aiden: The Shadow knows.
Aliarra: “Hanzo, scout it out for us!”
DM: Are you walking through the fwog? …the fog.
Hanzo: Yeah.

The DM double-checks that they all have their magic items of Endure Elements still on them. Hanzo steps up and finds the fog to actually have physical resistance.

Hanzo: (blowing on the fog)
Cissy: That’s what I was thinking! Oh, I’m sorry, let me pull out the pins – THERE ARE NO F-ING PINS!
DM: You pull the pins out of the fog, it vanishes.
Aliarra: Huh. You see Drek’thelar behind it, lounging around in his underwear. “Oh. Why do they always come when I’m in the shower?”
DM: Why does a creature of mass undead and skeletal limbs need underwear? “Force of habit.”
Aliarra: Look, I don’t see obscenity and immodesty in his portfolio.
Aiden: (looking at an illustration) I like the fact that the Servant of Pelor is clearly a fucking giant. I just realized – it just seems so weird.
Aliarra: Or that’s a halfling.
Aiden: Right.

Hanzo steps through the fog and is blasted with artic cold! Ahead he sees a long plain of ice and snow, filled with ranks of skeletons!

Cissy: “I GOT THIS!”
Aliarra: What is Cissy shouting about?
Cissy: Skeletons? I got this.
Aliarra: You don’t know, you’re not there. You’re just screaming at the fog wall for no reason.

The group has stumbled into the beginning of the first Birthright campaign. Hanzo bitterly smashes his poison.

Hanzo: Fuck this poison. Spent all this time -- (mumblegrumble) --fucking skeletons.

Hanzo steps back into the fog and reappears to tell them what he’d spotted. Apartheid jokes are made thanks to cookies; Aliarra gets her joke stolen once again.

Mrrshala: Oh! Oh! God damn it, and you’re not nearly as pissed at him as you were at me! Fucker!
Aliarra: I at least got the joke out and THEN he stole it. You read my mind and took it out of there.
Cissy: The only difference is we ignored when it came out of Aliarra’s mouth and laughed when it came out of Hanzo’s.
Aliarra: I’m used to that. Anyway…
Mrrshala: I feel dirty, back to the game.
Aliarra: “Skeletons await us? They haven’t been threats for … a long time now.”
Cissy: “Ever.”
Hanzo: Aliarra can just go in and trip the entire skeleton army.

A citadel awaits, hewn out of black steel it seems. The skeletons are not moving, and the players speculate that they are moved into the fog and teleported as reinforcements are called for.

Aliarra: “That’s fine, we don’t have time to deal with these. We’ll trust the army to do as they are supposed to do and head on.”
Hanzo: If Anakin takes out the control ship…
Cissy: “You sure? I could probably wipe them all out in one shot.”
Aliarra: “But we’re not going to.”
Cissy: “But I really want to.”
Aliarra: “I understand, but we’re not going to.”

Aiden steps forward onto icy, sloped ground and shoots off a cliff. The group marches through the skeletons, just doing innocent actions to the air, and if the skeletons get tripped or turned it’s their own fault. As they get further in, they spot minotaur skeletons amongst the wavering sights. Aliarra has her psion use True Seeing.

Aiden: You don’t have a psicrystal, damn it.
Aliarra: Yes she does.
Aiden: You pick up your psicrystal. ‘Psicrystal, give me sight BEYOND sight!’ Woowowwowwowwowwooowwooooo!
DM: ‘No, I chose to break the DM’s game with THIS, not a psicrystal!’

A furrow leads down to an entrance into the citadel, and the players head for that. Pokemon murder innocent people. Spot checks are called for and made – and they spot a party of undead that look like actual threats, armed and armored, and one riding a frostwyrm! Miniature are set up and maps are arranged. Everyone grimly prepares for Aiden to be one-shot by an exploding ice wyrm. Aiden gleefully looks forward to Greater Turning everything, except the low-level skeletons will just die anyway and the big ones probably can’t be turned so easily…

DM and Aiden: (molest Aliarra)
DM: Hey buddy.
Aiden: How’s it going? Yeah. Get that shoulder.
Aliarra: I’d complain, but that actually felt good. What? My neck hurts.
Mrrshala: Weeeeeh.
DM: Now it’s going to feel good. As well as your penis. Aw crap, that’s recorded. Oh well. When in Rome.
Aliarra: When in Rome, sleep with little children.


The DM keeps adding to the battlefield, having laid out countless hordes of skeletal ranks. Initiative at last ensues! Mrrshala, as usual, rolls so high that the other players beg Aliarra to reset it with White Raven Tactics. No one remembers how to actually play 3.5. Pan somehow goes first, even before Mrrshala, and he gears up for lightning (which is of course his shtick). He expends charges from his Ring of Lightning to gear up the chain lightning damage ever further. Cissy slavers to blast minotaur skeletons, and everyone else tries to rein her in. Ehlorra readies an energy wall, while Mrrshala refuses to move up and get chumped down by all their foes for some crazy reason. No one will move, in fact!

DM: Pan, I need a DC Fortitude save, please.
Aliarra: Finger of Death.

A very long silence.

Aliarra: Pan.
Aiden: DC 14 Fortitude save.
DM: Not 14, I need Fortitude.
Pan: Ooops, it started to get noisy here.
Aiden: PASS THIS SAVE. Or else my turn is going to be spent undoing other things.

Pan fails! One of the undead fires cold beams at Pan, hitting for 21. The group is quite relieved. Cissy envisions creating a hole in the ground, which – would momentarily inconvenience the undead in this wide-open battlefield. The undead casts fire shield, the cold version!

Cissy: I can actually drop 12 Fireballs on top of them.
Aiden: Why would you need to drop so much?
Cissy: Because I can? And I would just wipe them out in one shot.
Aiden: Seems like overkill. We’re not going to sleep. There could be a final boss.
Aliarra: What are you trying to use to drop that many fireballs anyway?
Cissy: I could use my Chain Spell metamagic feat.
Aliarra: Hold on. Any spell that specifies a SINGLE target.
Cissy: It does.
Aliarra: NO IT DOESN’T! THAT IS NOT HOW IT WORKS!

Cissy continues to slaver over spending her highest-level spell slots in ways that can’t be done in the first place, till even the DM is ragging on her for how long she’s taking on her turn. The undead all turn a fierce barrage of cold rays on Cissy in response.

Aiden: If you guys have to do Will saves and you’re within 10 feet of me, you get +2. Morale bonus.
Hanzo: Morale b—I thought you said ‘more elbows’.
Mrrshala: The People’s Elbow!

Cissy takes 59 points of damage and all the undead throw up fire shields as well. The group is unhappy. Aliarra goes next, attacking the undead with Divine Surge and hits for someone around 48, taking cold damage in turn from the shield.

Cissy: Yeah, you’re gonna be taking cold damage if you melee attack these things.
Hanzo: I have no other recourse, I’m just going to have to take it. That or sit out the combat.

Pan, up next, contemplates his options. Cissy slavers to cast Mass Fire Shield!

Pan: Does anyone need Enlarge Person?
Aliarra: I would kill for Enlarge Person.
DM: Look out, she’s going to kill you!
Pan: Oh no, I‘m going to die!

All the mini bases have been used up for undead, and Aliarra bemoans her lack of Star Crunch to use as a base. The group arbitrarily sets her AC to 2.

Mrrshala: Oh no, I DO hit with a 30…
Hanzo: (pointing angrily at a die he rolled) What’s that? WHAT IS THIS?
Aliarra: It’s a 6… I assume.
Hanzo: All right. Doesn’t really balance out the rest of this fucking crap.
Aliarra: I rolled three 1s on my 8d8, so—
Mrrashala: Well, you suck!
Aiden lobs a dispel into the enemies to turn off their fire shields, in anticipation of way too much pain coming from them to be tolerable. This takes a while because Rules.

Aliarra: That’s not so bad. Unless they could just recast them automatically, which would suck.
DM: All right, for the guy in the lead… his fire shield comes back on.
Aliarra: God damn it.
DM: At-will ability.

Aliarra goes for the trip AOO, but rolls terribly, and gets hit for 25, then Cissy takes a blast for 19. Cissy fires off Evard’s Black Tentacles – then realizes she can’t help but hit an ally.

DM: Oh come on, she’s large size, just put them in fray. It’s Cissy, she’s Chaotic. ‘She can take care of herself!’

The players legitimately consider this, but Cissy realizes she’ll also hit Mrrshala and drops it further back. At least some of the undead are grappled – and at least one is CRUSHED!

DM: He shouts something in a guttural language I don’t think any of you know.
Cissy: What’s the language?
Aliarra: We don’t know!
DM: If you don’t know, how would you know what it is?
Aliarra: It’s not Banglasharan.
Mrrshala: Mrrrooooooooww.
DM: Group languages: Common, Banglasharan, Giant, Draconic, Orc, Vampire, Dwarven, Elf, Celestial, Demonic, Gnome, and Goblin.
Aliarra: No one speaks Giant Owl.
Hanzo: Giant Owl?
Aliarra: Giant Owls speak Giant Owls.
Hanzo: How about Owlbear?
DM: He shouts, and four skeletons shift.
Aliarra: Energy Wall!

Up goes the wall, roasting ranks of skeletons as the mobile ones step through it. Cissy gets dropped, but her once-a-day armor power heals her back to consciousness. An undead advances on Aliarra and proceeds to make a mockery of her trip attempts, because it has a 25 Strength and the DM is on a hot streak tonight, till she finally hits the third one. It goes down and Aliarra attacks with Elder Mountain Hammer!

Aliarra: Ugh. I am rolling so bad.
DM: Well, if it makes you feel better, you’re going to hurt this guy. You’ve been punishing him pretty good.
Aliarra: Let’s see here. I rolled 8 dice. Four of them were 1s, two of them were 2s.

Pan steps up to try to lob a Storm Bolt, but as usual a line is a terrible AOE and hitting more than one enemy would open him to all sort of punishment. He ALSO rolls 1s and 2s.

Pan: 11 damage. On 6d6.
DM: With the damage that’s been done to him, that’s just enough to take him out.

Mrrshala and Hanzo roll up to put on some pain, while Aliarra and Aiden vie over spending money on mobile games. The transcriber of the future has only two words for Aiden: Trance Terra. But the DM has larger concerns.

DM: Stop eating your pie like a duck! I saw that.
Hanzo: 33 this time.
DM: 33?! Sweet mother of Christ!
Hanzo: If I could just actually crit--!
DM: You take him out in the first hit. You take 12 points of damage from the fire shield, but you do take him out.

Aiden uses extendo-arms to heal people without having to get into combat. Cissy rolls to cast defensively!

Cissy: I hope a 32 means I’m concentrating enough.
DM: Pretty sure you can cast through whatever they’re trying to do.
Aliarra: I object to Cissy having the Concentration skill. That’s totally out of character.
DM: The only thing she’s good at is concentrating while casting, that’s it.
Cissy: Concentrating while in combat.
Aiden: Concentrating on murder.
DM: She is in her element. Outside of that, I agree.
Aliarra: Then I object to Cissy having anything other than a -20 to Perception checks.

The wall pulses damage as Ehlorra’s turn comes out, though she does little. The one Aliarra tripped rises, and she takes her AOO.

Aliarra: That is a… plenty to hit.
DM: 20 to hit? Miss.
Aliarra: PLENTY. To hit. I have +23 to hit, DM, I can’t miss him, let’s be realistic.
DM: True, you can’t.
Hanzo: (helpfully contributing to a conversation between Aiden and Cissy) Did the tentacles have eyeballs?

Aliarra takes more damage than she deals, but the undead misses both its attacks! Ehlorra fires a Crystal Shard into one of them. Mrrshala gets White Raven Tactics! Aliarra attacks for a burst heal of 24. Mrrshala goes to town with attacks! Aliarra and Aiden was sentimental about the battle mat, which is slated for retirement later in the year. The field is theirs, and Aiden quickly dispenses the medical goodness!

Aiden: If I do three, that’ll take me down to ten regular turns at this point.
Aliarra: I don’t think that’s too much of a problem.
DM: I’m glad you guys were smart enough to dissuade Cissy from killing all those skeletons at once…

Down the furrow they head! Aiden faces the prospect of a slope while skating, and… doesn’t care.

Aiden: The feat I would want to use would be Heal-By Attack. To be able to -- (mimes touching for spells, then skating off)
DM: Aiden, it is the second-best thing to women. A long slope. Your feet itch. What’s your movement going down a slope now?
Aiden: It’s… 75.
DM: Jesus Christ.
Aliarra: I can’t fly that fast.
Cissy: Out of curiosity, Magic Missile, can I have the different missiles target different characters?
Aliarra: Yes.
Cissy: Heh heh. Cissy quickly turns around and fires Magic Missile.
Aliarra: CRUSH.
Cissy: And then chains it.
Aliarra: Crushing your sh-YOU CAN’T CHANGE IT, IT DOESN’T SPECIFY A SINGLE TARGET.
Aiden: ONE. SINGLE. TARGET.
Hanzo: You cannot do Bullet Ray with that spell.

The DM declares them to be overpowered, struggling to keep bitterness out of his voice. As they head down the furrow, they hear a distant roar, and the DM calls for Listen checks!

Aliarra: 6.
Cissy: Natural 1.
Mrrshala: Oh, I got a natural 20!
Hanzo: Oh, my Listen’s bad.

A couple of them here a ‘psst!’ A slim hand beckons to them from the wall! Said wall is illusory, opening into a warm cave area set up like living quarters.

Aliarra: What madman would live down here?
DM: In fact, standing before you is a slender elven woman, her eyes large in surprise. “People? Living, breathing actual people?!”
Hanzo: She’s crazy.
Aiden: While she’s talking, I’m going to do a Heal check on her, to check her mental stability and general health after being in the cold for so long.
Hanzo: It works that way?
Aiden: A 28 on Healing check.
DM: Mental stability maybe not so high, but she seems to be…
Aiden: “You seem to be of sound body—“
Hanzo: (cracking up) There goes Aiden!
Aiden: No, hold no, I’m pulling out Aiden’s female body detection ability. I need to get a grade on her.
Hanzo: Someone quick, Sense Motive, stop this now!

Aiden checks for wounds, while the rest of the group claims he’s honking boobs. Aiden doesn’t help his own case, even as Aliarra interrogates the woman – she’s been here for 400 years after her previous party died! LOTS of Motive-Sensing ensues!

Hanzo: 24.
DM: She seems to be on the up-and-up.
Aliarra: Substantially less than 24.
DM: She seems to be on the up-and-up.
Mrrshala: I got a 24.
DM: She seems to be on the up-and-up. Anybody roll a 1?
Hanzo: ‘She’s definitely going to kill us.’

She introduces herself Keyvaleran Mistgrove or close to that. Aiden begins asking her about DENERIM! Nothing is interesting about what she relates, sadly. This is their chance to rest and recover, and also a convenient spot for the game to end!