Of Heroic Inadequacies

Last night, May 22, marked the second adventure for the Border Board games RPG group. Our party was pleased to introduce two new characters played by Josh and Ken. In the wake of the mysterious overgrowth of the surrounding forest, the mayor had asked us to investigate both the cause and some probable solutions to the town's dilemma. Without access to the vital trade routes connecting the outpost to the rest of the empire starvation would rear its ugly head.

Little does he understand the depths of that danger as we soon discovered. Not only do hostile kobold tribes infest the great woods, the animals within have grown preternaturally large and, of more import, not at all timid of humanoids. Likewise the coinciding disappearance of the elven wizards from their tower and the vanishing of the knight warders has left the town all but defenseless. That's where our party fits in.

If only the mayor had better options available to him. Jakob the druid, Nonname the half-elf rangeress, Splinter the half-elf rogue, Stripe the sorcereress, Yama the monk and Amra the barbarian are the last hope of the colony. Gods help them all.

While our intentions were good, our abilities were somewhat lacking on the evening. A festival of critical fumbles ensued leading to a calamitous number of deaths for the party, most of which were endured by Splinter, our resident trap springer. It started out as badly as could be imagined. Though the door to the knight's keep was ajar, we should have turned around right then and fled to the tender mercies of the woods.

While investigating some corpses found within we noticed that two of the bodies were dessicated by great age and another, fresher, appeared to have been mauled about the face and neck. Meanwhile Splinter and Noname were busy activating flame-gout traps as we approached the door leading deeper into the keep. We managed to clamber into the stairwell leading to the second floor only to discover a rolling log trap. Noname ducked the log, Amra jumped it while Splinter and Jakob bravely tried to stop the log with our bodies. Splinter died and narrowly avoid irreversible death when the log was eventually prevented from impaling us on spikes along the opposite wall.

The second floor proved no boon either. As a newly revived Splinter went forward to check on the skeletal remains inhabiting the former dining hall, he apparently inspired them to rise and engage in one last act of murder. Still weak from his misadventure with the log he quickly went down again. Luckily Yama took pity on him and hustled his bleeding body out of the dining room of horror and to the relative safety of the lower level.

As always seems to be the case in combats with skeletons, it took far longer than it should. An endless series of whiffs and ineffective rolls severely impaired our ability to down the foes with anything approaching efficacy. With Yama hauling Splinter to safety, Noname remained the only adventurer in the room at all equipped to deal with skeletons. Stripe and Jakob bravely plugged away while Trip the Snake bravely attempted to poison creatures with minimal anatomical systems. Fortunately, despite grievous wounds, Noname and Amra managed to kill the fell creatures. Jakob did what he could for the wounded and the party barricaded itself in the room to rest.

Following the rest period the disaster resumed in earnest. Exploring the next floor revealed zombies stitched up with alchemical compounds designed to explode. What manner of twisted fiend creates zombie-bombs anyway? As Amra stood in front of Splinter, ostensibly to shield the thief while he worked on a locked and trapped door, Splinter again succumbed, this time to a toxic needle trap. Jakob charged forward to help while Amtra battered his way into the room. Once inside a body was dismembered and a bed set on fire. The exact details escape me at the moment.

In the meantime the fire-pellets continued to shoot down the hall, lighting the zombie-bomb on fire. using a combination of trusty woolen blanket and Ray of Frost Noname and Stripe extinguished the burning undead while Yama hauled the fell thing away. Newly revived for the third time, some ingenuity on part of Splinter and Amra managed to stop a fire-pellet trap by shoving a dismembered zombie head into the hole.

Eventually we managed to escape the level with a bejeweled sword, a shiny ring and a crown and the tatters of our dignity. The final level of the keep proved no better for our party than any of those previous. Some manner of devilish thing cackled and tormented us as his sluggish zombie guardians moved to attack. The creature, an imp we would later discover, proved frustratingly adept at evading harm while inflicting misery on our company.

Jakob cast the first stone, a magic stone, and struck the foul beast solidly. It was pretty much all downhill from there. The archers studded the zombies with arrows to little effect while the Imp disappeared. Over the course of the battle Noname fell and then Jakob. In spite of flanking bonuses granted by Trip, the imp seemed to easily avoid the wild swings and ineffectual jabs of our heroes. Stripe expended her cache of spells wounding the Imp but not felling it. The Imp in turn beat her within an inch, or HP, of her life. In a daring move, which ultimately proved the better judgement, Splinter's Choice was to administer a healing potion to Noname to get her back into the fight. Jakob was too far gone to be certain that the potion would do more than stabilize him. The group needed swords, not malingerers.

It came down to the raging barbarian whose mighty axe swings battered the wicked creature. As the imp dropped into the pit, did I mention the gaping pit to the Abyss in the middle of the room?, a ragged cheer went up. Efforts by Yama and Stripe to stabilize the dying druid failed and Jakob went on to a better place - the Seventh Pit of Hell for example.

While the knight's tower may have been ridded of its pestilential evil for the time being, the heroes will proceed sans their lone divine caster. Fortunately I have another character idea in mind. Just need to find a sharp pencil....