West seemed like as good a direction as any. We had no fucking clue.

Previously...

The party sat just outside the walls studying the place.

"I don't think this is it," Merrick said.

Aldren looked over. "Why?"

"That man over there has a pirate hat on." Everyone looked. Merrick pointed. "And a wooden leg."

Lucian squinted toward the settlement. "That is admittedly unusual."

"And an eye patch."

Aldren shrugged. "Well, we're already here. Let's see what this place is about."

Merrick smiled. "You just want to make a new friend, don't you?"

Aldren ignored him while Lucian unfolded his wilderness map. "You know, this place wasn't here the last time we passed through this area. I checked."

"Maybe we missed it?" Merrick suggested.

Mara slowly looked at him. "Yeah. We missed a dozen buildings, a wall, and an entire population of people wearing silly fucking hats."

Merrick studied her face. "You didn't get to have your morning coffee mixed with virgin man tears, did you?"

"No."

That explained everything.

Before anyone could debate whether walking voluntarily into an unidentified pirate settlement was a good idea, a band of buccaneers rode out to meet them and offered to escort the party inside. Because that's just the kind of hospitable pirates they were.

The party went along willingly and was deposited in the middle of what appeared to be a small merchant district. Nobody searched them. Nobody questioned them. Nobody really seemed to care what they did.

A quaint little pirate market. Probably great schools.

Merrick looked around at the stalls. "Looks like we're in the merchant area."

"Don't get any funny ideas," Mara said.

"Who? Me? Never."

Merrick immediately stole a small wooden spoon from an unsuspecting vendor.

Nobody noticed.

About five minutes later, the party approached a large door guarded by two shirtless motherfuckers.

"I didn't take anything!" Merrick blurted.

Both guards looked at him.

Mara sighed. "Don't pay any attention to him. He's an idiot."

"Right," one of the guards said. "Well, do you have a pass to see the captain? If not, we're gonna need all four of you to fuck off and away from his door."

"Right. Sorry," Aldren said, gently ushering everyone away.

Once they were out of earshot, Mara glanced back. "We could take 'em."

"No," Aldren said. "We just got here. Let's look around a little."

Mara licked her lips and grinned. "I could take them."

Aldren blinked. "In a fight?"

Mara slowly turned toward him.

"Yes," Aldren said quickly. "Obviously. That's what you meant."

Merrick grinned. "I heard it too."

"So did I," Lucian added.

Mara looked at all three men. "I fucking hate traveling with you people."

The party continued exploring. They wandered through a few guard towers, poked around a barracks, and found one particularly interesting door that led directly into a wall as far as I could tell, considering the game absolutely refused to let us open it or walk through it.

Eventually, a seedy-looking man crept out from the shadows of one of the buildings. He had a sickly yellow complexion, looked like he hadn't slept properly in about six years, and smelled of an odd combination of patchouli and vinegar.

This man absolutely accepts cash only.

"Pssst. Buddy. Want to buy a pass to see the captain?"

"Yes!" Merrick said.

Aldren raised a hand. "Now wait a minute, Merrick. I'm not going to stop you from engaging in this particular interaction, but perhaps you should consider whether buying an obviously forged pass from a strange man lurking in an alley is—"

Merrick already had the pass. The jaundiced man was gone.

Aldren lowered his hand. "Never mind."

A short distance away, the party discovered something considerably less amusing. A fenced pen held a number of slaves. The people inside were dirty, exhausted, and visibly beaten. Guards stood around the enclosure while merchants inspected the prisoners as if they were fucking livestock. Near the bars stood a small shirtless boy with a haircut that made him look disturbingly like Moe from the Three Stooges. He clung to the fence and cried.

As the party approached, a fat merchant waddled over.

"That young boy will bring a good price at Zhentil Keep," he announced. "I think I shall buy him."

Mara looked at the man. "Overshare much?"

She wanted to punch him.

Now, Mara was an evil bitch. We've established this. She'd threaten innocent people, smash a helpless corpse just because Merrick wanted to search it, and probably sell an eighteen-year-old into indentured servitude if there was enough money involved. But trafficking little kids? That's where this evil cleric drew the line. Maybe not all evil clerics, but THIS evil cleric.

Aldren wanted to rescue the boy outright. Lucian and Merrick were generally leaning in the same direction as Mara: namely, that the merchant was a piece of shit who deserved something violent and bone-shattering.

Four options. Three of them involved punching somebody. Mara liked those odds.

Decision Die time.

A 1, 2, or 3 meant party-on-merchant violence. A 4 meant we'd concentrate on rescuing the boy.

Roll them bones!

We rolled a 2, and I put my hands together and rubbed.

Mara punched the fucking merchant directly in his fucking face. His nose broke with a wet crunch. Blood exploded across his mouth and shirt as he stumbled backward, and immediately a group of buccaneer guards rushed the party.

Aldren drew his sword. "Okay. So we're doing this."

The party massacred them. And I mean massacred them. Like fighting wet puppies. These weren't trolls. They weren't spellcasters. They weren't giant boars or vampires or horrible fucking undead creatures capable of sucking levels out through your asshole. They were pirates. Plain, everyday, level-one pirates.

By the end of the fight there were severed limbs lying between the merchant stalls, enormous pools of blood spreading across the dirt, and enough internal organs scattered around to make the place look like somebody had knocked over a butcher shop.

Then a large man in gleaming chain mail stepped forward.

"That was amusing," he said, surveying the dead guards. "But do not cause any more trouble!"

I stared at the screen. This was not the reaction I'd anticipated from a pirate encampment that kept and sold slaves.

Or maybe it was?

I mean, the party had just brutally murdered a sizable portion of this man's security staff in broad daylight and got a warning. So Merrick answered in the voice of a third grader responding to a teacher named Miss Thimblebottom.

"We won't."

The man walked away.

We murdered his coworkers and got a verbal warning. Solid management.

Merrick watched him leave. "Seriously?"

Lucian looked around at the bodies. "Their disciplinary system does seem unusually forgiving."

"Their guards are pussies," Mara said.

"Mara."

She pointed at a torso lying several feet from its original legs. "Am I wrong?"

Aldren considered this. "No. But still."

Merrick kicked a severed hand out of his path. "I mean, that one lasted maybe eight seconds."

Mara looked toward the slave pen. "We should burn this entire place to the ground. Then use the ashes as war paint."

Aldren looked at her with a mixture of admiration and mild fear. "For once, I'm in agreement with you. Let's bide our time, though. Scope the place out. Maybe speak to the captain, assuming Merrick's forged pass actually gets us through the door."

Mara didn't answer. She just tightened her grip on the hammer. For once, she'd stumbled into a place where beating the living shit out of everyone might actually qualify as the right thing to do.

Lucian suddenly frowned. "Merrick, what did you just do?"

Nobody had been watching the thief. This was generally a mistake. Several nearby animal pens were open, and a small herd of liberated livestock stampeded across the compound in a massive cloud of dust while guards shouted and ran after them.

Merrick grinned. "Um... nothing."

Absolute confusion spread throughout the fort. Guards rushed past the party chasing animals in every direction. This probably would've been an excellent opportunity to sneak around and search the place while everyone was distracted, but considering how easily the party had just turned the last batch of guards into meat, stealth didn't seem terribly necessary. So they kept exploring and enjoyed the chaos.

Eventually Merrick ducked inside one of the barracks and found it empty. Everyone who would've normally occupied it was currently outside chasing livestock.

Then the guards came back.

The door worked about as well as the rest of this fucking fort.

Lucian immediately cast Sleep. He didn't need to, but six buccaneers dropped to the floor anyway, and then my max-level party tore through the rest of them.

More guards stormed inside. The game started slowing down, which was cute. I don't know whether it was because it was chaining so many fights back-to-back or because it was desperately trying to calculate where to store all the fucking corpses we were creating. Either way, the second group didn't fare any better. Not one member of my party lost a single hit point while the opposing force lost every fucking one of theirs.

Another wave arrived.

"Don't these assholes understand what's happening here?" Mara asked as she pulled her hammer free from somebody's chest. "Why do they keep coming?"

Lucian glanced toward the door. "Perhaps information regarding the previous groups has not traveled efficiently."

Merrick looked around the barracks. "How? The floor is fucking people."

At some point this stopped being combat and became pest control.

Twenty more buccaneers died. Somewhere in that group was apparently a fifth-level fighter, although I didn't even notice him until he was dead. Then another twenty pirates showed up.

Merrick, who was growing a bit annoyed, looked at Lucian. "Lucy?"

Lucian visibly twitched, then nodded. "On it."

A Fireball streaked toward the doorway. The explosion hit the incoming buccaneers before most of them even made it properly into the room. Bodies lifted off the ground. Several men disappeared inside the blast, and by the time the fire cleared, most of that wave was blackened and dead.

The party handled whatever was still moving.

Finally, a man wearing shining armor approached through the carnage.

"You have fought well," he declared. "You may now ransom yourselves or die!"

Yup. Somehow this guy had looked at everything that had just happened and still decided this was going to go well for him.

We attacked.

These guys were better than the endless parade of disposable pirate assholes who had come before them. Several skilled fighters accompanied the captain, and for the first time in a while somebody in this place actually managed to fight back.

Lucian opened with Fireball. Mara took one look at the captain, decided he was too buff and far too healthy for her liking, and cast Hold Person.

He froze.

Mara smiled. "Just how I like my men."

Merrick looked over. "Skullcrusher really fucked you up, didn't he?"

"He was a real man. Unlike all of you."

She walked over to the completely helpless captain, raised her hammer, and brought it down against the side of his head with a sickening crack. His knees buckled and he dropped where he stood.

One blow. That was it for the captain.

Mara prefers her men held, helpless, and within hammer range.

Lucian cast Stinking Cloud over four veteran warriors, leaving them choking inside the haze. Mara cast Cure Light Wounds on herself because some of the pirate trash had actually managed to hurt her, then used Hold Person again, freezing three more pirates. She cast it one more time and locked down another three. Pretty soon nearly every surviving buccaneer was either asleep, frozen in place, or coughing like he'd just taken a bong rip of some schwag.

The party killed the rest.

By the time it was over, the barracks looked like somebody had tried to run a slaughterhouse out of it. Around eighty buccaneers were dead in a room that was definitely not designed to hold eighty corpses. Blood covered the floor. Arms, legs, hands, and various other pieces were scattered between overturned bunks. One man's intestines had been dragged halfway across the room by somebody's boot, and the doorway itself was partially blocked by bodies.

Outside, the slaves began cheering. The fort had been liberated. My party had basically become a four-person United States: show up, blow the shit out of the bad guys, declare the place liberated, and worry about the details later.

I couldn't have been prouder.

Buccaneers Base, painstakingly mapped by a grown man who could've been doing literally anything else.

Merrick stood there for a moment, surrounded by roughly eighty dead buccaneers, then slowly reached into his pocket and pulled out the pass he'd bought from the shady jaundiced guy earlier.

"Oh, come on. I never even got to use this."

Mara glanced around at the bodies. "I think we found another way in."

Nobody said anything for a moment. Then Merrick shifted uncomfortably.

"Um... I think I have a thumb in my pants."

He shoved one blood-covered hand down the front of his trousers and started digging around.

Mara stared at him. "This is disgusting, even for me."

Merrick pulled his hand back out. "Nah. It was an ear."

He tossed it underhand across the room, where it hit the floor with a wet little splat.

Aldren wiped his sword clean on the clothing of the nearest dead pirate. "Somehow, I don't think this is where we were supposed to deliver that message from the Town Council."

Mara stared at him. "Ya think?!"

They made camp right there. Honestly, at that point they could've camped anywhere within a mile and nobody was going to complain. Once everyone was rested and healed, the party searched the fort for anything worth taking, which was, unfortunately, nothing.

Merrick was devastated. After conquering an entire pirate settlement and killing enough men to populate a small village, the party left with almost nothing worth stealing. The wooden spoon remained Merrick's biggest score, and even that I'd just made up as context for the story.

There was no spoon.

Eventually, they headed back into the wilderness.

"Um..." Merrick said, holding the map upside down. "It looks like we've already been everywhere else." He left bloody fingerprints across the tattered paper.

Lucian reached over and turned the map around. "Perhaps we should continue west anyway. That buccaneer camp wasn't present the first time we traveled through this region."

"Oh." Merrick studied the now-correct map. "That makes considerably more sense."

After more wandering, they eventually traveled far to the southwest and reached a fortress they had visited before. They had also killed everybody inside before.

Oh good. Another place full of people we'd already killed once.

Good news!

The inhabitants had magically repopulated.

Even better news!

Nobody seemed to remember the war crimes.

A group of soldiers approached the party.

"Ah! You must be the diplomatic envoys from Phlan, yes?"

Aldren looked at the others.

Merrick shrugged.

"Yup, that's us," Aldren said.

They were escorted inside.

Merrick looked around as they walked. "You know, I don't remember this place being this big last time."

Nobody answered.

They were taken directly to the commandant's office. Aldren handed over the papers from New Phlan, and the commandant welcomed the group warmly. He even invited them to dinner.

Well, damn. Looks like we finally found the correct fucking place.

The party was given a totally unnecessary tour of the keep before joining the commandant and several of his advisors for dinner. Roast boar and red wine. Honestly, not bad.

During dinner, the commandant asked how things were going back in Phlan, and Lucian ended up talking about magic. At some point, one of the commandant's advisors leaned toward him.

"Have you heard of any unique magical items or places?"

Interesting.

Coin flip.

Heads, Lucian would lie. Tails, he would mention the Pool of Radiance.

Flip.

Tails.

Lucian took a sip of wine. "There have been certain references to a place known as the Pool of Radiance."

The commandant immediately perked up.

"The Pool of Radiance? That reminds me of an old story I first heard while serving at the Citadel of The Raven."

Roast boar, red wine, and a bedtime story about a lizard getting fucking boiled alive. Classy evening.

He settled back and began.

“This is an old story that I first heard while serving at the Citadel of The Raven. Dirg was the usual barbarian hero -- the type able to snap five men’s backs with his bare hands, wrestle and tame the cloud horses, pierce a man with a javelin from many miles away, and other equally preposterous things.

“The story goes that Dirg and his band of men found a pool of unfrozen water while wandering in the snowy wastes. Dirg’s little pet lizard Jezma got too close to the pool and discovered that not only was the water not frozen, it was boiling hot; so hot that it cooked the skin right off of Jezma.

“Dirg was so angered he thrust his spear into the pool and roiled the waters. The demon of fire that inhabited the pool was disturbed and roared out of the pool to do battle. The demon leapt from man to man, consuming them in a single touch.

“But the demon of fire could not defeat Dirg. Neither could Dirg find a weapon strong enough to withstand the creature’s fire. After battling for an entire day, Dirg finally called upon his totem god for aid.

“With this magical aid, Dirg was able to trap the flaming demon in a triangle of power where supposedly he is even to this day.”

The table went quiet.

Merrick chewed thoughtfully on a piece of boar. "So the magical pool cooks lizards and spits out demons."

Lucian frowned. "That's an extremely reductive interpretation."

"But accurate?"

Lucian considered it. "Broadly."

Aldren looked slightly concerned. "We've been trying to find this thing?"

"Yes," Lucian said.

"And the story involves a fire demon."

"Yes."

Aldren took a long drink of wine.

Mara smiled. "Now I'm interested."

The dinner continued, and eventually Merrick got his wish when the conversation shifted toward politics.

"I've heard that Phlan's Town Council is corrupt," the commandant said. "Specifically Ulrich Eberhard. Is this true?"

Wonderful.

Let's roll a 1d3.

1 for yes. 2 for no. 3 for don't know.

We rolled a 2.

Merrick sat up straight. "Absolutely not. Ulrich Eberhard is a loyal and honest man."

Everyone at the table looked at him.

Merrick smiled confidently.

"Of course he is," the commandant replied.

That sounded normal.

Eventually Aldren brought up the city itself.

The commandant leaned toward him. "Is it true that the real power in New Phlan is Bishop Braccio?"

Same deal.

Yes. No. Don't know.

The roll? A 3.

Aldren shrugged. "Honestly? I have no clue."

The commandant seemed satisfied enough with that answer, and eventually the evening came to an end. The party was escorted back to their quarters and, considering nearly everyone they met eventually seemed to try killing them, decided sleeping in shifts would probably be prudent.

This turned out to be an excellent fucking idea because barely two hours later four armed assholes kicked down the door.

Room service showed up armed and two hours late.

Lucian immediately dropped a Stinking Cloud over three of them while Merrick whipped a sling stone into the fourth—the one directly in front of Mara—and brought him down. The remaining guards didn't last much longer. Then more showed up, and they lasted approximately three turns.

Immediately after that, an alarm began ringing somewhere in the fortress.

Merrick covered his ears. "Great. This again."

Apparently Valjevo Castle had started a trend.

The party moved into the corridors as guards poured toward them. What followed was wave after wave of soldiers who seemed to have absolutely no understanding of what had just happened to the men in front of them. Aldren cut them down, Mara smashed them apart, Merrick threw rocks at them, and Lucian made entire sections of hallway unpleasant to occupy.

Eventually, they ran into a much stronger force led by a heavily armored dwarf. Mara immediately cast Hold Person, and the dwarf stopped dead. Unfortunately for him, Aldren was standing right beside him. One swing later, he was dead, and the rest of the attack force followed shortly afterward.

Then the commandant arrived with friends. Lucian had deliberately kept one particularly useful spell in reserve.

Fireball.

Merrick discovers that diplomacy is weak against Lightning Bolt.

The spell tore into the commandant's force, blasting through the packed group and filling the battlefield with flame.

And then Merrick fucking died from a Lightning Bolt to the face.

No unconsciousness. No bleeding out.

Just dead.

Again.

Before anyone could really react, another Lightning Bolt slammed into Mara, dropping her onto the cold floor and leaving her dying. Lucian rushed over, quickly bandaged her wounds, and stabilized her while Aldren kept the enemy away.

"Darn!" Aldren shouted.

Things had gone to shit fast. Merrick and Mara were out of commission, which left only Aldren and Lucian against the commandant and whoever he had left.

Lucian pulled out his Wand of Paralyzation and pointed it directly at the commandant, but the bastard resisted it.

"Of course," Lucian muttered.

He pulled out a scroll and cast Stinking Cloud instead. The commandant and two of his men began coughing violently inside the haze, and Aldren charged into the confusion and killed one of them.

Lucian tried Hold Person, which again did nothing against the commandant, so he cast another Stinking Cloud and disabled two more of his men.

And then the commandant did something I genuinely didn't expect.

The motherfucker ran.

Aldren swung out and carved a massive wound down the man's back, but the asshole kept moving. Lucian killed one of the remaining soldiers with his staff and turned toward the fleeing commandant.

Magic Missile.

Ten damage.

The commandant staggered but kept going while Aldren killed another soldier. Lucian raised his Wand of Magic Missiles.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

Bolt after bolt slammed into the commandant until the man was limping away, badly injured and leaving blood behind him. Then Aldren caught up and swung one final time. The commandant's head came clean off his shoulders, hit the floor, bounced once, and rolled several feet away.

The commandant had a brief but serious disagreement with Aldren's sword.

Lucian looked around. Mara was still unconscious, and Merrick was, well, extremely dead.

Aldren wiped his blade. "I think that's everyone."

Together, Aldren and Lucian searched the commandant's body and piled whatever useful-looking items they found into Mara and Merrick's pockets because, as everybody knows, dead and unconscious people make very good luggage. With their leader gone, the surviving defenders either surrendered or ran away, and the outpost now belonged to the party.

Aldren crouched beside Merrick and picked the thief up in his arms. "We need to go back to Phlan. We'll come back here after we take care of him."

Mara's eyes cracked open. She sniffed, then looked toward Merrick's corpse.

"He's starting to stink."

Lucian stared at her. "He has only been dead for mere minutes!"

Mara shrugged without bothering to sit up, then shut her eyes again.

Back to New Phlan!

At the temple, the party handed over another 5,500 gold pieces to have Merrick raised from the dead. At this point I feel like the Temple of Tyr should offer some sort of punch card.

Raise five thieves, get the sixth resurrection free.

Merrick opened his eyes, stared upward for a few seconds, then frowned.

"Oh, fuck me."

Aldren leaned over him. "Welcome back."

Merrick slowly sat up. "White light again."

Lucian nodded. "You were dead."

"I know."

Mara looked him over. "You smell better now."

Merrick stared at her. "I was dead for like an hour!"

"It was a long hour."

"Fuck you."

"Welcome back."

After many, many nights at the local hostel, the entire party was finally healed enough to start functioning like adventurers again. More importantly, they had a pile of magical shit from the outpost that needed identifying, so off to the arms shop they went.

Aldren upgraded to a Shield +2 and Plate Mail +3. He passed his old Plate Mail +2 down to Mara, which was a pretty significant defensive improvement for her as well. Lucian ended up with Bracers AC 3.

And Merrick? Merrick got himself a set of Gauntlets of Ogre Power.

Yup. The party was slowly cornering the regional market on magical gloves that made you freakishly strong.

Merrick flexed in front of a nearby mirror, then rolled his shirt up too. "Mara! Check it out! Abs!"

There was also a collection of magical equipment nobody really needed. Another Shield +1, another suit of Plate Mail +2, and even a Long Sword +4 were sold off. We were officially at the point in the game where a Long Sword +4 was vendor trash.

That's how fucking ridiculous everybody's equipment was getting.

The party eventually returned to the Town Council office, where the clerk smiled as they approached.

Somehow the Council considered all of this a successful mission.

"Excellent work! And thank you for returning Bivant's child to us."

Merrick froze. "Um... you're welcome, I guess." He nudged Aldren and leaned closer. "Did we rescue a small boy while I was dead?"

Aldren shrugged.

Apparently we did.

For returning the heir, the party received a Two-Handed Sword +1, +3 versus undead and four clerical scrolls. The sword itself wasn't terribly useful, though. Aldren already had a Long Sword +5, and I had no intention of switching him back to a two-hander unless it was worth it.

Aldren stared at the new sword. "I shall call this one Wendy."

Mara looked at him. "No."

Aldren frowned. "No?"

"You already have one."

Aldren looked down at Stacy, and then he remembered. Stacy had been with him since the nomad camp. He'd ditched his shield just so he could use her. He'd split a troll from head to toe with her. Even after finding the Long Sword +5 and having almost no practical reason to carry the damn thing anymore, he had refused to get rid of her.

Hell, he'd eventually named her.

Aldren looked at Wendy, then Stacy, then Wendy again.

Merrick leaned toward Lucian. "He's actually thinking about this."

"I know."

Finally, Aldren sighed. "I'm sorry, Wendy."

Mara rubbed her temples. "You named that sword thirty seconds ago."

"It wasn't meant to be."

Aldren pulled Stacy close.

Merrick stared at him. "You know neither one of them has feelings, right?"

"Just let me have this."

And that was that. Wendy's career ended before it began, and Stacy stayed.

Then the clerk rewarded them again for successfully delivering the Council's message. The four adventurers elected not to mention that delivery of said message had ultimately resulted in the commandant trying to murder them, Merrick getting killed by a Lightning Bolt, and the entire outpost being violently conquered.

Some things are better left unsaid.

Aldren tucked away another assortment of trinkets and jewels the city had given them. By my estimate, they had enough jewelry and gems by this point to buy all of New Phlan.

In fact, if this were a real tabletop session, that's exactly what I would do.

Oh, the fun I would have.

AHEM.

Back to reality.

Oh, there goes gravity...

"Well," Aldren said, "I suppose we should head back and fully search the fort."

Merrick's eyes lit up. "Search?"

"Yes."

"As in look through all the rooms?"

"Yes."

"For treasure?"

Aldren sighed. "Potentially."

Merrick was already walking toward the city gate.

Mara watched him go. "Amazing."

"What?" Aldren asked.

"Five thousand five hundred gold to bring him back from the dead and all you have to say is treasure and he's ready to get killed again."

Lucian adjusted his new bracers. "Perhaps death has ceased to function as a meaningful deterrent."

From somewhere ahead of them, Merrick shouted, "ARE YOU ASSHOLES COMING OR WHAT?"

Mara picked up her hammer. "Unfortunately."

And so our four adventurers prepared to head west.

Again.

At this point I was mostly curious how many times we could kill everybody in the same fucking fort before the game stopped replacing them.

The Party So Far

We went west looking for the outpost where the Council wanted its message delivered and instead found pirates. The party freed a compound full of slaves by killing roughly everybody who worked there, accidentally completed the missing House Bivant heir quest somewhere along the way, then finally found the actual diplomatic outpost.

They delivered the message, had a pleasant dinner, discussed the Pool of Radiance, slept for approximately two hours, and were promptly attacked by their hosts. Merrick died again, we spent another 5,500 gold bringing him back again, and at least the loot was good.

Aldren Kestyr — Level 8 Fighter

Now wearing Plate Mail +3 and carrying a Shield +2 alongside his Long Sword +5 and Gauntlets of Ogre Power. Briefly named the new undead-slaying two-hander Wendy, remembered everything he and Stacy had been through together, and immediately went crawling back to his old sword. Also removed the commandant's head.

Mara Threl — Level 6 Cleric

Now wearing Aldren's old Plate Mail +2 with her Hammer +3, Ring of Protection +2, and Gauntlets of Ogre Power. Started a pirate war by punching a slave merchant, helped turn a barracks into a slaughterhouse, then survived a Lightning Bolt after Lucian stabilized her.

Lucian Eldwyck — Level 6 Magic-User

Now sporting Bracers AC 3 with his Ring of Protection +3. Got his Fireball off against the commandant's force, kept Mara alive, and helped turn the fleeing bastard into a limping wreck with repeated Magic Missiles.

Merrick Sorne — Level 9 Thief

Still wearing Leather Armor +4 and his Cloak of Displacement, carrying the Short Sword +2 and Sling of Seeking +2, and now wearing Gauntlets of Ogre Power. Released a pen full of animals, never got to use the shady pirate pass he bought, took a Lightning Bolt directly to the face, died, and got better.

Again.

Financially, Merrick remains our most expensive recurring problem.

Next Time On...