Confession

I have a confession to make....

I have been turned to the dark side, I have started role-playing. Well, actually, I joined the group that I role-play with in December, so this is not a new development. Lissa invited me to join her role-playing group in a Dungeons and Dragons game lead by her boyfriend Andy at their house every Friday night. Also in the group in their friend Tony (whom I hung out with a few times out side of D&D to see if we might want a relationship. I ended up telling him I'd rather not date at the moment)

So, back in December I observed for one night as they started the very first day of the campaign (that's what they call this individual game of D&D as opposed to the game that might be played by another group) The group in the game consisted of four characters. Lissa's character is a bad-ass petite red-headed warrior elf that joined this group in hopes of discovering lost elven treasure. She joined because Jared, an old man(played by Andy) had a map to a lost elven city he wanted to go investigate. With the old man was a younger man named Roderick, a blond warrior monk that didn't talk much at all. Finally, there was the construct. A construct is kind of like an android, except run by magic, I'm still a little iffy on the details, but this construct (played by Tony) had a soul, and could walk, talk, and think for himself (as opposed to being controlled by the mage that constructed him). It turns out he came from an alternate plane, but he doesn't remember how he came to this plane. He joins the group so that he can travel and hopefully find out where he came from. He eventually gives himself a name--Valar. On that first night, this somewhat dysfunctional team joined together for the first time and followed the map to a lost elven city, which just so happened to be a lost elven city of the elves that went bad. The elves of this city worshipped a dark goddess and were exiled. They were known as the Drow.

Well, they go to the city, not knowing the evil that lies in wait, and accidentally unleash the ultimate evil, a dark god of the Drow, from his prison deep within the city.

villages out in the middle of nowhere that had managed to become somewhat twisted in time. Twisted to the point that she was about to be forced to marry a known murderer because her father, the village head, wanted the man for his son. It all seems pretty fun from where I sat, so the next week I came back and joined the group. I created my character. My character is Yana Elkwood, a runaway druid from a cluster of druidicYana fled, and after discovering that her father and fiance had sent out bounty hunters to bring her back, she was advised to find a group to travel with. That way she would stay moving around, making it more difficult for any bounty hunters to catch up with her. Also, hopefully she could learn over time to fight and use her druid magic so that she could defend herself alone in the future.

So there is Yana, young, at 17, and somewhat naive to the ways of the world. She finds the burned skull of a werewolf (guess who killed it) in the remains of a campfire out in the wilderness. She follows the tracks of the wagon leading away from the camp. Those tracks lead her to the new camp of the merry dysfunctional group of travelers just outside of the a dense forest that hides the lost elven city. The camp is rather somber (what with them having just unleashed an evil god upon the world, they have good reason, not that Yana knows that...) Her animal companion, a pine marten named Zor she had raised herself after she found it orphaned outside of her village, informed her that they all seemed to be good people. Yana made an executive decision and revealed herself from the shadows so that she could introduce herself. It was an awkward meeting, but she was accepted easily enough after she offered to help heal them (the group was pretty beat up from fighting evil gods and other unsightly things in the elven city).

Yana travels with the group back to the capital. It must have only been the first night back in the capital that Yana heard Roderick slip out of his room in the inn late at night. She decided to follow him. He is fast, but she keeps up. Turns out Roderick has a hobby. His hobby is killing bad guys. Yana hears a conflict form the alley Roderick disappeared into. When she looks into the alley, Roderick is gone, two men are dead and a third is barely alive. Yana heals the injured man, then returns to the inn.

This event sets the color of Yana's relationship with Roderick. She is pretty much terrified of him, even after he says that he only kills bad people. I mean, what if he thinks she is bad? She broke the laws of her village by fleeing her marriage, and she stole from her father. It certainly didn't help that Yana had a very unfortunate talent at finding the bodies of Roderick's victims no matter how well he hid them. She doesn't even try, they are just always there.

Doesn't this sound like fun? I'm not a geek right? .....ah shut up.

Anyway, the game progressed, the group was sent to an alternate plane to retrieve a sword that had that ability to kill a god. Things happen: Talia accidentally kills the witch, a teenage girl that went a little overboard trying to get revenge for her mother's unrightful execution years before by destroying the city and then bringing her mother back to life; Yana asks Roderick to take care of an interrogation only to discover that Roderick had tortured the man to the point that the man took his own life after giving Roderick the information he sought (Roderick broke all of the man's limbs then left him with a knife so that he could end his own life. He then had the gall to tell Yana, who had since realized what a terrible mistake it was to leave Roderick in charge of the interrogation, that no, he had not killed the man); etc, etc.

Last night, things were settling down. We luckily had a few days to rest up and train before we tried to find a way to overthrow a tyrant. However, we needed to stay low. Magic was outlawed in this city, and the tyrant was searching for the sword that we had. Talia (who has been showing more and more evidence of becoming an alcoholic as the game progressed; what with the guilt of unleashing the elves' evil god, killing the girl she felt didn't deserve to die for her crime and ultimately having nothing to look forward to but her execution by her people after she fixes her mistake, that is if she can) and Roderick go drinking in the inn we are staying in. Now, Talia has the constitution of a freaking giant. She drinks poison and survives. Roderick is a different story. It doesn't help that they choose to drink the strongest of the liquor available, Corvis Spirits.

At this point, it is important to know that Yana and Roderick have talked, Yana stills feels that Roderick is kind of crazy, but she understands that she is safe around him. It is also important to know that Roderick has a ring, a very special ring that lets him basically teleport (Yana does not like that he has that ring at all).

Corvis Spirits are called that for a reason, it turns out that this drink is so strong, it makes people see spirits, or hallucinate. Too bad Roderick has a guilty conscience from all of the people he has killed. He looses it when he starts seeing spirits. He activates his ring and starts trying to chase and fight the spirits he saw, leaving a path of carnage in his wake. Talia then puts on her ring of invisibility in hopes of going out into the city unseen, but still drunk.

Yana had come downstairs in time to witness the two in their drunken stupor and wonder to herself why she traveled with the group. Then she sees Roderick disappear. "Oh shit!"

First Yana tries to get Talia to stay behind in the inn, but fails. Thankfully, Talia manages to overcome her drunkenness ( that is she throws up all over the inn floor and asks what is going on), and the inn keeper demands that Talia return to her room. Yana thinks she leaves Talia there as she heads into the city after Roderick, but Talia sneaks out. Valar and Jared stay behind in the inn.

There is more craziness, and a path of carnage to follow. Roderick burns out the ring and looses the ability to transport, but not before he transports himself into the headquarters of a guild hideout. Yana finds him first, but can't calm him. He is fighting real people thinking he is fighting spirits. She settles for helping him fight, in hopes of eliminating the threat around him so she can try to calm him down again. Talia arrives and joins in the fight.

That failed, the guild leader shot Roderick with poison arrows, bringing him down. He then brought our whole group before him and told us that we had to infiltrate another guild's hideout and get back his kidnapped daughter as payment for the damage to his property and the lives of the men Roderick had killed.

So much for time to train in hiding. If we failed in this mission, we would all be killed. Yana is not in the least bit happy with Roderick. She's not particularly happy with Talia either, but Roderick is the one that got them into all of the trouble. They get Roderick to an abandoned house where the group then tries to take care of him. Talia is insistent that they remove the ring from Roderick's hand. Yana goes to heal him, starting with removing the ring but I fail the dice roll. I roll a one, and Yana ends up taking off Roderick's finger along with the ring. She freaks, throwing the finger into the air. Talia catches it, carves the ring from it with her dagger, the realigns it with Roderick's hand and tells Yana to heal it. Yana does, the finger reattaches.

It was so stressful! I play a game for fun and end up doing all of that! The morning was the best. Yana wakes last, but bitch-slaps Roderick as soon as she does wake up. Roderick gets caught up on the situation, and feeling terribly guilty asks, "When will you let me die?"

Yana responds venomously, "No, you won't die, I will heal you every time." This as opposed to earlier in the game after finding that Roderick had tortured the man she asked him to interrogate where she had told him she wouldn't heal him anymore.

Talia continues giving him a run down on everything that happened and that must now be done to repay damages. Yana makes sure to interject when Talia only says that they healed his finger, "Oh, and don't forget about the part where I took off his finger. That was great."


Yeah, that was great.

We stopped playing around 5:30 AM.