The Wyrm of Brandonstead, session 3

Friday night I ran the third and final session of our Wyrm of Brandonstead D&D adventure. The first two sessions are here and here for your recapping pleasure.


Return to Brandonstead

After retrieving Sir Brandon’s magical dragon-slaying sword from his tomb, the heroes returned to Brandonstead. Here they reunited with Brigette, who had travelled from Neensford after completing her training. The rest of the group filled her in on their adventures around Brandonstead so far.

Nogge experimented with the warning stones discovered in Sir Brandon’s tomb, to determine if they vibrate only when living creatures cross the perimeter or whenever something is within the area. He determined that anything inside the convex hull of the stones would set them off.

Notgandalf wanted to find someone to construct a grasping device that could hold his solidified eyeball at the end of his 10-foot pole when he uses his magical ring to pop it out of the socket. This would allow him to poke the eye around corners to spy out the terrain, without needing to roll it around unconstrained. Quinn at the Golden Egg Tavern suggested he go see Warwick the town smith.

Warwick and the Fairy

Warwick turned out to be a burly man, but rather simple-minded and superstitious. His workshop was covered with lucky charms: horseshoes, rabbits feet, clovers, which he’d nailed to all the walls. He said he could make Notgandalf an eyeball holder but it would take a couple of days and cost 20 silver coins. But he’d had problems sourcing metal for working, since the dwarves who traded with him hadn’t visited for a few weeks. He also said that a “fairy” has been harassing him, spying through his window at night. The charms are to keep it away, but he’s not sure they’re working. Sometimes the fairy leaves flowers on his windowsill.

The heroes decided to stake out the smithy overnight and see if they could catch the fairy visitor. Nogge wanted some sleep to heal minor wounds, but was interrupted around midnight by the warning stones he’d set up near Warwick’s window. Brigette spotted a human-sized shape in a cloak approaching the smithy, but the figure bolted into the trees when the warning stones went off. Brigette chased and the figure, who stopped and removed her hood to reveal Ingrid, the town’s alchemist who they’d met before. Brigette and Nogge questioned her about why she’s spying on Warwick.

Nogge: “I’m not going to be surprised by anything you say about Warwick.”
Ingrid: “I’m in love with him.”
Nogge: “Okay, I’m a bit surprised.”

Given Warwick’s simple-minded obliviousness, and Ingrid’s nervous shyness, it’s clear any potential romance is doomed to be awkwardly difficult. The heroes suggested Ingrid write Warwick a note rather than spy on him, but she pointed out he can’t read. They said they would talk to Warwick and told Ingrid to go home. The next morning they talked with Warwick and asked what he thought about Ingrid. He said he thought she might be a witch, but the heroes assured him she wasn’t, and suggested he go talk to her.

Seeking the Dragon

That morning the heroes set out to try to find the dragon, now they had Sir Brandon’s sword. Brother Leonardo decided he had chores to do in the village, so stayed behind. The retainers Tarlan (cleric) and Fingers (thief) and a few others followed the heroes.

Following the path north along the river, they caught up to two men also heading north, a short fat one carrying a pitchfork and a tall one carrying a net and with a dead pig slung over his shoulder. The heroes caught up to the men and chatted with them. They were Tad (short, fat, only 4 teeth) and Zach (tall, big Adam’s apple). They explained in simple yokel language that they were going to use the pig to lure the dragon out, then toss the net over it to catch it.

Nogge: “They could make decent bait themselves…”

After some aside discussion, the group decided to let Tad and Zach try their plan, while they followed from a discreet distance and observed. And if the dragon really appeared, they could decide what to do then. After all, the dragon might have some trouble dealing with them.

Drashi: “I don’t think it’s going to have much trouble with a dead pig.”

Tad and Zach stopped at a spot close to the foothills of the mountains and staked the pig out near the eastern river bank, then took cover in the bushes nearby to watch. The heroes stayed about 100 metres south, hidden in the trees. A breeze was blowing south out of the mountains, so they were downwind of the dead pig, which they thought was sensible as the dragon would not smell them. Nogge decided to try to get some sleep while the rest watched throughout the day.

Mid-afternoon there was a commotion across the river, and the watchers spotted four goblins emerging towards the river, chatting, singing, and generally acting half drunk. They had short swords and ill-fitting armour. The group roused Nogge, who again failed to get a solid healing sleep. One of the goblins spotted the pig on the other river bank and they began wading across the river. Garamond loosed an arrow, which found its mark in the lead goblin’s chest. As it slumped dead in the river, the other goblins panicked and fled back into the western forest. Notgandalf tossed a dagger as well, but it splashed into the river.

Tad and Zach confronted the heroes, accusing them of wanting to steal their dragon. They calmed the brothers down and decided to head to the northern side of their stake-out. Once out of view, they resumed their surveillance from a distance. Now they were upwind of the dead pig.

The Dragon

No more events occurred until after sunset. Nogge tried again to get a full sleep, but was roused around midnight when a slithering, slobbering, snuffling sound carried across to them from the western forest. Emerging from the trees was a large crocodile-shaped creature, 10 metres long, low slung and heavy on the ground. Its mouth glowed with a sickly yellow light and tendrils of smoke drifted from its nostrils and slavering jaws.

The Dragon crossed the river and went for the dead pig. Garamond began sneaking up through the cover of the trees. Tad and Zach rushed out brandishing pitchfork and net, but the dragon breathed a cloud of yellowish smoke at them and they began choking. Zach fell where he stood, while Tad raced to the river to wash away the noxious fumes and rinse out his throat.

Garamond charged the dragon with the Sword of Sir Brandon! The magic sword found its mark, puncturing the dragon’s side. Drashi also hit and Notgandalf loosed a magic missile. The dragon clawed at Garamond, raking its talons down his side, and lashed with its jaws at Drashi. Brigette joined combat and Notgandalf hit it with another magic missile. Nogge got a hit in, before Garamond skewered Sir Brandon’s sword through its mouth and up into its skull, vanquishing the fell beast.

Tarlan raced over to provide magical healing to Zach, saving his life. As everyone watched, the dragon’s scales fell off and its body dissolved into pools of acidic slime. Amidst the ooze were not dragon bones, but the skeleton of a dwarf! The heroes collected the bones, and then discussed with Tad and Zach, reinforcing the narrative that they had, in fact, slain a dragon, even without the ability to bring the dragon’s head back to town.

Confirmation and reward

The party, with Tad and Zach, returned to Brandonstead. They went to the Clumsy Fox Tavern to seek out Eric the village Reeve, who was relaxing there. They related their story, including that the dragon dissolved when dead. They suggested that Eric accompany them north the next morning to see the dragon-stained grass by the river to confirm their story. Bentley, owner of the Clumsy Fox, complained that he’d been having trouble with someone stealing his best booze from his cellar.

Next morning, they set out with Eric the Reeve and Lady Hilda, the captain of the village guard. They reached the spot where the dragon had died, seeing the large area of grass burnt by the acidic slime. Eric accepted this as evidence and promised the heroes their reward when they returned to town.

But the party wanted to search for the missing dwarves, and so parted ways with Eric and Hilda, who returned to the village. The party crossed the river and followed the dissolved vegetation of the dragon trail through the forest, coming across a collapsed log cabin near a hillside with a mine entrance. Digging through the ruins of the cabin, they found a mining pick with the name Grimni carved on the blade, and a silver dwarven beard comb. They then found the body of a dwarf, wearing a ring.

Investigating the mine entrance revealed a collapsed cave-in just inside the entrance. Brigette and Drashi used their dwarven skills to shore up the roof and excavate a bit, finding another dwarven body. This one was holding a pick engraved with the name Kedri.

The party decided to follow the dragon tracks further west, leading them to a cave in the base of the mountains, surrounded by blackened and dead vegetation. Investigating, they found the cave to be a simple chamber containing the dragon’s hoard! Around 2000 gold coins, 6 golden rings, most still on severed fingers and hands. Garnet earrings, still attached to a rotting human head. A carved stone skull with red gemstone eyes. And a magnificent cutlass decorated with gems of different shades of blue. The group collected the treasure and began hauling it back to Brandonstead.

Character moments

  • Brigette – Chasing down Ingrid the alchemist through the midnight forest outside Warwick’s smithy.
  • Drashi – .
  • Garamond – Slaying the dragon with Sir Brandon’s magical sword.
  • Nogge – Playing with warning stones. Suggesting Tad and Zach would make good dragon bait.
  • Notgandalf – Commissioning an eyeball holder for his 10-foot pole. Two magic missiles on the dragon.

Loot

  • Ring from dead dwarf – magical.
  • 2000 gold coins
  • 6 golden rings – estimated value 10gp each.
  • Garnet earrings – estimated value 140gp.
  • Stone skull with red gemstone eyes – estimated value 250gp.
  • Blue gem decorated cutlass – magical, Drashi.

This pretty much wraps up this adventure, so I’m planning the next one now! There are a few loose threads, but nothing major, and I think we’ll address those pretty quickly at the start of the next session before launching into a new adventure.


At the game, we had a feast on Greek chicken and lamb with pita bread, because my wife’s work had a lunch function which was – as is always the case at these things – heavily over-catered, and so she brought home two big boxes of food.

Today (Saturday) was hot again, 35°C. Scully had her pre-Christmas groom, and my wife had the groomer cut her har a lot shorter than we normally do, because of the hot weather. I spent some time shuttling them both around in the car to avoid walking around in the heat of the day. But we all went for a walk together in the evening as the sun was setting, which was much nicer.

New content yesterday:

New content today:

Board game birthday party and super hot day

Friday was board games night. Normally it would be an online night in the fortnightly rotation, but one of my friends wanted to host it in person as it was his birthday. And he wanted to do some traditional party food like you might get at a child’s birthday party. So he got party pies and spring rolls, and other people brought chips and lollies and stuff. I brought party sausage rolls and my wife decided she had to make chocolate crackles. She got the ingredients and made them the night before. I didn’t tell any of the gaming guys and when I brought out the chocolate crackles everyone thought it was awesome.

When I arrived three of them were just finishing off a game of Jump Drive. Two more arrived soon after me, making it six of us. We had a break to sit out on the balcony in the warmth of the evening and eat, before moving indoors to begin a game of Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest. I did pretty well, coming second. Then we went on to casual games of No Thanks, followed by Apples to Apples to round out the party evening.

Today was more notable for the weather. It was Sydney’s hottest day since the horrible 2019 Black Summer bushfire season, just before COVID. We reached 40°C in the city and just a fraction shy of 44°C in several suburbs. A cool southerly change is due to come through about 9pm which will hopefully cool it down enough to be tolerable for sleeping. Tomorrow should be cooler, but it’ll build up again to around 40°C by Thursday.

There’s also a dangerous looking tropical cyclone tracking towards the Queensland coast – a long way from me, but it could be serious for the people in northern Queensland. Official warnings haven’t been issued yet as it’s still a few days away, but authorities are starting to say residents should begin preparing.

Despite the heat, I felt I needed to go for a run this morning. I left early, but it was already 25°C at 8:30am, with a “feels like” temperature above 30°C. I took it very easy and managed 5k, in 28:14. Slower than I normally aim for, but fine under the conditions.

For dinner tonight we made a nice hot weather dish: falafel salad with tahini dressing. Lots of chopped salad vegetables – lettuce, cucumber, carrot, tomato – topped with hot falafels, pomegranate arils, and then the dressing, which is tahini, water, lemon juice, extra virgin olive oil, a pinch of salt, cumin, and sumac.

New content today:

Contemplating Daggerheart

One of my friends signed up for the Daggerheart playtest. If you don’t know about this, it’s an upcoming fantasy roleplaying game produced by the people running the popular Critical Role web series – a bunch of professional voice actors who are playing a Dungeons & Dragons campaign and record their play sessions. They want to move away from using the D&D system to a game of their own devising, to avoid intellectual property concerns about using D&D. So this end they are writing their own system.

Anyway, they’re holding a public playtest, which you need to register for, and my friend decided some weeks ago to sign up for it. He has received a confirmation that he’ll be getting the playtest rules, and is planning to run a game for us. I’m interested to see how it runs, although from the public previews so far I honestly don’t have particularly high expectations. It seems they’ve hewed pretty closely to the mindset of the 5th edition rules of D&D, which in my opinion are not the best ruleset they could be emulating. But we’ll see how it works in practice.

In other news, I didn’t have time for much today in between running 5 ethics classes, on this week’s topic of Exercise. Getting some interesting responses from some of the kids, although many of them are fairly predictable.

New content today:

Turkeys, turkeys, everywhere

Around where we live it’s easy to find Australian brushturkeys. Here’s a photo I took of one a while back:

Australian brushturkey

They’re big birds, and have become more and more common in this area over the years. They scrape for food in leaf litter, and this time of year they build large mounds of litter and mulch to incubate their eggs, using the warmth of the decaying mulch rather than sitting on the eggs. So they move around a lot of leaf litter. And this year in particular I’ve been noticing that a lot of the footpaths we walk on around the neighbourhood are constantly being covered in a layer of leaf litter, sometimes so thick that you almost have to wade through it. While the adjacent garden beds are scraped clear of mulch and have large patches of bare soil.

There’s been a bit of this in previous years but this year it’s particularly bad. I’m guessing a lot of residents are constantly scraping or sweeping mulch back into the gardens and off the footpaths, or maybe their are council workers going around and doing it. I’m starting to wonder how much of this the gardens can take before the birds become real pests and start having an adverse effect on plants. Being native birds they’re a protected species, so there’s nothing anyone can do about them, legally.

In other news today, I received my Kickstarter copy of Dungeon Crawl Classics #100: The Music of the Spheres is Chaos. This is a wacky dungeon adventure with some cool bonus stuff because it’s the 100th adventure in Goodman Games’s series. Should be fun!

And tonight was another project tutorial session at the university for the image processing course. For dinner beforehand I tried a new burger and wings place. I had the chicken burger with peri-peri sauce, which came with a side of chips. It was pretty good! I’d go back here again some other time. Though not this semester since I’m still trying to eat somewhere different and new every week.

And after the project session with the students, the professor, who’s an old colleague from the previous jobs we did together at Canon, asked me if I wanted to fill in for him in teaching the next 18 months worth of his courses, as he has an offer to do some outsourced research work which will take up all his teaching time. This means I’d be organising the courses and giving the lectures for the courses – which involves some time commitment, but also extra income. And it’s a great opportunity to do some more university level teaching. So I’m very interested! I just need to see how many hours a week of work will be required, and fit that into my current Outschool schedule.

So this is pretty big news, and I’m a bit excited!

New content today:

The Wyrm of Brandonstead, session 2

On Friday night I ran the second session of the Wyrm of Brandonstead D&D adventure with my friends. I’ll paste the session log in here, but a few other things first.

On Friday I had a busy day, with 4 ethics classes. I had a 4-hour break in between after the first morning class, but I needed to use this time to travel out to Macquarie University to a medical clinic there to get a nerve conduction scan done. I’ve had some loss of sensation in my left leg for several years, just a very slight numbness, like 80-90% normal sensation, just enough to be noticeably not normal. I had some scans done years ago when I first noticed it, but nothing conclusive came up. It doesn’t really bother me, but recently I noticed the numbness spreading, and so my doctor referred me to back to the neurologist, who ordered another set of scans.

For this one, they place electrodes on the skin of the leg, and then use an electric probe to send small currents through the nerves. It’s not painful but it causes a jolting sensation and the leg muscles twitch quite strongly. After doing a few of those, there’s a needle test, where they stick a needle into the various leg muscles and again pulse electric current through them to measure the conduction of the nerves. This is all to measure if the nerves are conducting electric signals at the normal strength or not. On Monday I also have an MRI scan scheduled to check if there’s some sort of pinching of the nerves at the base of the spine.

At the university I also found this beautiful flame tree:

Flame tree

Anyway, that done I returned home and immediately went out to the doggy daycare place to pick up Scully, who I’d dropped off earlier, first thing in the morning. Then I had three more ethics classes, and that led right up to the D&D evening. So it was a pretty full day. There were six players who had said they’d show up for D&D, but one called in sick with a cold, and another said he was very tired so elected not to drive over, but he did join in by telepresence. I set up my wife’s laptop on the table so he could join in!

Virtual D&D

We added the gloves for amusement.

Today I did a 5k run in the morning, which was tough because it was close to 100% humidity. Then I spend time writing up the adventure log from last night. In the middle of the day my wife and I went for a drive out to the beach and the pie shop there for lunch, then dropped in on her mother for a visit on the way back. While near the beach, we passed a park where some people were playing cricket. And since everyone knows that a cricket field needs a picket fence around it, with a gate so the players can get in and out, they had set up a picket fence gate:

Picket fence gate at cricket field

This evening we walked up the street, intending to get dinner at a cheap Asian place, but they didn’t have any unreserved tables available. So we wandered up the main street looking for somewhere else to eat. The trouble is Saturday night is very popular and busy, so most places didn’t have tables free. We finally found a table at a restaurant which is pretty fancy and expensive. We like this place, but don’t go there often because of the expense, but we decided to just splurge for no particular reason.

With that out of the way, here’s the log of last night’s D&D session:


Regathering

As the party contemplated what to do, footsteps and the familiar voice of Brother Leonardo approached. He had completed his penance for overly beseeching his god and travelled to Brandonstead to seek out the rest of the group. There, the innkeeper Bentley had told Leonardo that the group had set out for Sir Brandon’s tomb this morning. Leonardo followed their footsteps and found the retainers waiting outside the tomb. They told him to go in and turn right and he might find the rest of the party.

Rats!

The party decided messing with the antlered clay statue and its encircling stones was too risky and explored the passage to the west. Here they found a 4-foot deep circular pool of water, scummed with algae and slime, but beneath it a faint glitter of gold from the bottom. This also struck them as risky, so they retreated back to the main corridor and advanced west towards the chittering sound.

A long corridor led west and turned south into a room where they found 8 giant rats, the size of large dogs, squabbling over half-rotten food that had spilled from large broken clay amphorae. The amphorae looked like they’d been tipped over and smashed on the stone floor.

Drashi tossed a ration of food over the rats towards the far opening in the southern wall, causing them to race over and fight over the fresher food. Garamond rigged his lantern full of oil and threw it hard at the rats, attempting to spread oil over them and set them on fire, but his throw was poor and the lantern smashed short of the its target, creating a pool of fire between the heroes and the rats. The party took this chance to move into the eastern exit while the rats were busy and partly blocked by fire.

In the eastern room they found nine amphorae, intact and standing upright, with an odour of dust and lavender. Someone knocked one over and it smashed on the floor, spilling cloudy old lavender oil all over the floor. Garamond and Nogge worked together to carry an amphora into the rat room and smashed it on the floor, creating a large pool of fire. Three of the rats died in the conflagration, screeching horribly, while the remaining five scurried away to the south.

Undead!

With the way blocked by fire, the party retreated back to the earlier oom the the antlered statue. Here Drashi tried breaching the circle of small black stones to approach the statue, intending to toss a coin into the offering bowls. But as he stepped into the circle of stones, they began jumping and clattering on the floor, making a loud sound. Nogge collected the stones, and they quietened down as they came together. Drashi tossed a gold coin into an offering bowl, but nothing happened.

They went into the room with the slimy pool of water and Nogge tossed in one of the black stones. Then they noticed that as someone stepped between Nogge and the pool, the stones began rattling in Nogge’s hands. They figured if someone was between the stones they would jostle and make noise.

They were interrupted by an approaching sound, clanking and the scraping of metal on stone. Attracted to the noise they’d been making was a large skeleton, 7 feet tall, wearing rusty armour and a silver death mask with a bushy moustache on it. The skeleton wielded a large two-handed sword. The heroes attacked, with Notgandalf striking with another well-aimed thrown dagger. After a a few rounds of fighting, they prevailed over the skeleton and Nogge claimed the two-handed sword.

Now they decided they had to retrieve the one in the pool in order to make the best use of the stones. But they also realised that in the chaos, the goblins they had captured had snuck away and fled, nowhere to be seen.

Nogge: “Can I carry the others stones around the pool and see when they vibrate, to determine if there’s anything alive in the pool?”
DM: “We’re just one step away from you wanting to do computed tomography on the pool”.

Nogge waded into the pool and got covered in green slime, which began eating away at his armour and skin. He jumped out of the pool and grabbed a torch from Tarlan the cleric, and burnt the slime off, taking a bit of damage from the fire himself. Nogge then waded back into the pool with bare feet, searching the bottom with his feet to find the black stone. He also found a human skeleton, which had two gold teeth in its skull, and an ornate silver dagger. Notgandalf took the dagger to use.

The party went back to the rat room. The lavender oil fire had died out, but the remaining five rats had returned to get more of the food. The group decided to just attack and kill the rats the old-fashioned way this time, making swift work of them with weapons.

But the noise appeared to have attracted more attention! Maniacal laughter approached from the south. Quickly, the heroes hatched a plan: spill another amphora of lavender oil across the southern entrance and set it on fire, to prevent whatever it was from approaching them. Fire set, the party girded themselves and waited to see what new foe appeared. A floating skull with big yellow eyes swivelling in its sockets approached, flying right over the slick of fire! It cackled as it approached. Notgandalf wasted no time and cast Magic Missile at it. Nogge then swung his new two-handed sword at the skull, cleaving it in twain, and revealing the sword to be magically empowered.

The ghost!

The next room to the south was an old armoury, with shattered weapons and shields strewn about, covered in thick spider webs. Notgandalf cast Detect Magic to see if any of the equipment was magical. Finding none, he then ran back to the room with the antlered statue to see if there was any magic there. He found a small golden amulet, hidden behind one of the offering bowls, which had a folded up piece of paper inside, inscribed with a Protection from Evil spell.

After he returned, the group headed east into a lounge area with carved stone armchairs and a table with an empty bronze pitcher on it. The next room to the east held nine 5-foot tall stone statues of warriors, each armed with a real wooden, metal-tipped spear. While deciding what to do, a ghostly apparition of a bearded priest appeared and drifted towards them! It screamed that the party was trespassing on hallowed ground and ordered one of the stone statues to attack. The statue charged at Nogge, who took a spear hit, before the statue froze again.

Severely wounded and not willing to risk fighting all of the statues, Nogge suggested a retreat. The party fell back, but Garamond and Notgandalf loosed Magic Missiles at the ghost. They hit it with three Missiles, which caused the ghost to dissipate.

Safe for now, but wounded and out of Leonardo’s healing spells, the party decided to retreat and return to Brandonstead for a day of rest.

The upper chapel

After resting for a full day to recover and make use of Leonardo’s healing spells, the party felt strong enough to return to Sir Brandon’s barrow.

First they tried exploring the western passage from the entry chamber on the upper level, which they had ignored until now. The first room contained four 8-foot tall statues of knights in different poses, with words carved on the plinths: “Valour” gripping sword and shield; “Piety” praying, with a staff resting on one arm; “Wisdom” reading a book; “Duty” bent over carrying a load.

This led to another chamber west, a chapel with stone pews facing a stone statue of St Arthur, patron of hunters. Water dripped from a root-penetrated hole in the ceiling, onto the states face, which was partly covered in mould. Brother Leonardo decided to clean the mould off with his robes, which released as cloud of spires that he managed to avoid. After cleaning the statue to look respectable again, Leonardo felt blessed by the good grace of St Arthur.

The crypts

Returning to the lower level, the party returned to the armoury room and headed south, finding a priest’s work room with a desk, and a footlocker full of rocks. One the desk was a magnificent illuminated book with velum pages, titled Lives of the Saints. Leonardo said it told the stories of several of the local saints venerated in the region. In the desk drawers were a small hammer, chisel, quills, and dried bottles of ink.

A room to the east was a crypt, containing a sarcophagus, the lid carved to show a human with a long beard. Next to the sarcophagus was a small table with three dusty bottles, containing greenish, purple, and yellowish liquids respectively. They took these then opened the sarcophagus, revealing a headless skeleton which attacked with a great silver-bladed axe. The heroes defeated the skeleton and Drashi claimed the axe.

Nogge: “Can I put one of the black stones on either side of a sarcophagus to see if theres anything alive inside?”

The next room east was another crypt, with the sarcophagus lid broken on the floor. Inside was the desiccated corpse of the priest, with platinum coins over the eyes. It held a carved stone tablet in its crossed arms, which Leonardo determined was a clerical spell of Bless.

The next room along was a third crypt, this one with the sarcophagus lid shattered on the floor, as if pushed violently off from inside. The sarcophagus was empty except for rotting shrouds exuding a musty smell.

From here a passage headed north to the room of the nine stone statues again. Brother Leonardo used the Blessing spell from the stone tablet on everyone, before they tried prodding the statue carefully in case they animated. But they remained solid, and they tipped them over to smash them on the floor.

Progressing east they found an antechamber with great stone double doors leading south, shut and blocked by a statue of a noble woman wearing a crown, holding a stone sword out horizontally in front of her. Brother Leonardo decided to kneel beneath the sword. He heard a woman’s voice in his head: “What makes a true knight?” Leonardo answered with the inscriptions from the statues in the upper level: “Valour, piety, wisdom, duty”. The statue moved slightly to dub Leonardo on the shoulder with the sword, and the double doors slowly swung open.

Revealed inside was the crypt of Sir Brandon. His sarcophagus was in a small ship, the lid carved in Brandon’s likeness. The group removed the lid carefully, finding Sir Brandon’s body resting peacefully within, clad in plate armour, with a shield, magnificent sword, and jewelled chalice.

The group took these items before letting Sir Brandon be, reasoning that they had need of dragon-slaying gear in their present adventure. On the way out of the barrow they also grabbed the coins and five small rubies from the offering bowls in the antlered state room.

Character moments

  • Brother Leonardo – Cleaning the statue of St Arthur and getting spore clouded in his face. Kneeling before the sword-wielding queen statue.
  • Drashi – Tossing rations to giant rats. Breaching the circle of rattling stones to toss a coin into the offering bowls.
  • Garamond – Making a molotov cocktail out of an oil lantern. Failing to hit rats with it and creating a flaming pool in front of them.
  • Nogge – Wading into the slimy pool and immediately getting covered in green slime. Obsessing over magical rattling stones. Cleaving the floating skull in twain.
  • Notgandalf – Hitting with daggers again! Casting Detect Magic and then running back through the tomb alone to check other rooms.

Loot

  • 10 small black “warning” stones – magical, Nogge
  • Two-handed Sword of Sir Alfred – magical +1 sword, Nogge
  • 2 gold teeth – estimated value 20gp
  • Ornate silver dagger – Notgandalf using
  • Golden amulet – value: ?
  • Scroll: Protection from Evil – Notgandalf
  • Illuminated book: Lives of the Saints: value: ?
  • Silver Axe of Sir Wyllt – Drashi
  • Stone tablet: Bless scroll – used
  • 2 platinum coins
  • Sword of Sir Brandon – magical, Garamond
  • Plate mail of Sir Brandon – Garamond
  • 45sp and 20 gp – from offering bowls
  • 5 small rubies – from offering bowls

New content today:

New content today:

A Kickstarter windfall?

This afternoon I got an email from an Australian distributor, saying they have my copy of a Kickstarter game that I backed, and will be shipping it to me soon. I kind of expected this, because this campaign sent updates saying that they had sent a crate of games to their Australian distributor to ship – this arrangement saves on international shipping and makes it more feasible to back something from Australia. Kickstarters that don’t do this are often something like back the project for $50, and then pay $80 extra for shipping it to Australia.

And then I got three more emails in quick succession saying the exact same thing about three other games… game that I never backed and didn’t even know about. Obviously it’s some sort of notification error, but I’m quietly hoping I get all four games!

The most exciting thing I did today was make a trip to the liquor store to restock our supplies of wine and a few other random things. I needed a new bottle of vodka, which I use to preserve fresh ginger so that it lasts as long as I need to use it up without it rotting. I took Scully and was browsing around the shop with her (since they allow dogs inside), and a few people came up and said how cute she was.

It was a warm day, 33°C. But we had a cool change come through in the mid-evening, with thunder and heavy rain, and tomorrow should be cooler.

New content today:

Fancy floral food

This morning I picked up the groceries and then did a 5k run. Today was cold again, with spring back into winter mode.

I printed out a copy of the board/card game that I’ve been working on designing with my class of three kids in my Creative Thinking class (which I mentioned a few days ago). I cut out the cards and Fame counters, and played a couple of games with my wife. The game plays very quickly, in 5-10 minutes. I actually at one stage grabbed a pen and scribbled new rules on one of the cards in my hand – which caused my wife to object about me changing the rules in the middle of the game! But of course this is just good playtesting practice!

Anyway, we came up with a few potential improvements, which I can use as discussion points in the next lesson on Monday night. Apart from those, the game seems to play pretty well! I think with a few simple tweaks we can make it a decent little game.

My wife went to the local farmer’s market this morning and came home with a bag of interesting vegetables, including a small container of edible flowers. So I decided to get fancy with dinner. I made risotto with asparagus and baby zucchinis, and used the zucchini flowers and edible flowers to decorate.

Vegetable risotto

Vegetable risotto

Looks amazing, and tasted pretty good too. There are plenty of the flowers left, so it looks like we’re going to be having fancy dinners all week.

Oh, and here’s a bonus photo of Scully at the park yesterday.

Scully at Badanggari Park

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Monday/Tuesday combo two-in-one post

Monday I was busy in the evening so didn’t have time for posting. And tonight I’ll be out at the university for the student project kick-off lecture for the image processing course I’m tutoring. So I thought I’d make a combined post for both days. Yesterday (Monday) was a lot cooler than Sunday, but today (Tuesday) is already warming up dramatically again as of 10am. Monday was actually a public holiday here, Labour Day.

I spent some time knocking ideas into shape for my current game design class on outschool, in which I’m working with three students on ideas for a game about crystal balls. I came up with three different possible modes of game play:

  1. Cards list random events that could happen to a person: e.g. “win the lottery”, “get married”, “lose your job”. You lay out a series of cards face down so nobody can see them – this represents future events, which are now fixed by the layout. Players are fortune tellers and can use their crystal balls to peek at a card, thus learning what is going to happen to a client in the future. Here it gets a bit vague – somehow you do this to earn money and/or reputation.
  2. You use your crystal ball to make free-form predictions of what other players will do on future turns. On the given future turn, the player who has had a prediction made can choose to either (a) follow the prediction, gaining some benefit, and also giving the predictor positive reputation for being accurate, or (b) defy the prediction, losing the benefit, but also giving the predictor loss of reputation.
  3. Players are fortune tellers competing for business in the same town. You have a hand of cards with events on them, and “use your crystal ball” to foresee those events happening to your rivals. Some are positive, some are negative, and you choose an opponent and place the card in front of them. The card has countdown numbers on the edges, and each turn you rotate the cards played in front of you to count down the turns, and when they reach 0 the event happens. Your shop might burn down 3 turns from now, losing you a lot of money. But! If you take out fire insurance (using another card) before your shop burns down, you collect a huge payout! So you can use your knowledge of future events to change good/bad events.

The last one is the one I like the most, and the kids in the class all agreed. So that’s what I’ll be developing into a full-blown game over the next few days, in time for the next class next Monday.

When my wife and I went to take Scully for a walk after lunch, we found a film crew filming something right outside our place. A dozen or so people, vans, lighting gear. They were filming something on the walkway from the footpath going around the side of our apartment block property to the rear entrances of some of the units. I stopped and asked what they were doing and one of them told me it was an “independent film project”. It wasn’t huge like a fully professional set-up; more like a film school student project or something. They were still here when we came back about an hour later, filming someone driving a car up our street – we saw it reverse and drive back a couple of times as they filmed it.

In the afternoon I did another 5k run. My times on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday were very consistent: 27:20, 27:21, and 27:20. While walking back home through the park from the end of the run, I spotted a king parrot feeding on a tree near the path.

Australian king parrot

I approached as close as I could and it was tame enough that I got within about 30cm with my phone to get these photos.

Australian king parrot

In the evening I had that game design class, and also a new ethics class time for older kids. A parent had signed up a girl for a younger kids class last Friday, and she had enjoyed it so much that the parent wanted to enrol and older sister into a class too, but there were no suitable vacancies. So I made a new class on Mondays. At the moment there’s just the one student, but the class went well because she’s clever and talkative. The parent wrote back soon afterwards to say what a great class it was and how excited the kid was to talk about it. So that’s good!

Today I’ll be working on producing that crystal ball game, and maybe writing some comics, before heading into the university tonight.

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1 chance in 4096

This morning I had bread for breakfast. This is unusual, as I almost always have cereal – home-made muesli with fruit and yoghurt on weekdays, and Weet Bix on weekends. But I forgot to order the groceries for pickup on Friday, and we’d run out of milk, so I couldn’t have my normal Weet Bix. And I’d baked a new sourdough loaf yesterday, trying it with some rolled oats for the first time, so I decided to just have a couple of slices, one with butter and one with marmalade.

After breakfast I went for a 5k run. The morning was warm and humid and it was pretty draining. But it was good to have that done before the day got hotter.

Before lunch I played another game of Root with my wife. She wanted to try Marquise de Cat again, after attempting the Eyrie last time. Playing the Eyrie birds myself, I was attempting to gain territory by initiating battles to gain clearings and then build roosts. When you battle, you roll two dice, which are 12-sided, but numbered 0-3 three times each, so there’s an equal chance of each number form 0 to 3. Battles favour the initiator: the defender loses warriors equal to the higher number rolled on the dice, while the attacker loses warriors equal to the lower number.

What should have been about halfway into the game, I started a battle. I rolled the dice and got double 3, meaning we each removed 3 warriors. So I took heavier losses than expected, as double 3 is the only way of losing 3 attackers, a 1 in 16 chance.

In the next battle: I rolled double 3 again.

In the next battle: I rolled double 3 again.

I took so many unexpected losses, that my wife ran away with the game from there. Yes, she was losing the same number of cat warriors as I was birds, but the cats recruit forces significantly faster. I should have been inflicting a lot more casualties than I was sustaining. Anyway, it was basically a debacle from that point, and my wife won easily.

After lunch, we went to visit some friends, taking Scully so she could play with their dog. We hung out for a bit in the very slight breeze outside, in the shade at the rear of the house. It was really pretty hot out in the sun.

Tomorrow is supposed to be even hotter, forecast up to 37°C.

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Seeing into the future: Crystal balls!

Monday morning is the regular end-of-ethics-week final classes in the morning. Morning classes are usually full of kids from North America, because it’s early evening over there. Honestly I was glad to be finished this week’s Energy topic, for reasons I touched on earlier. I tried to revise the plan on the fly to include more open-ended discussion questions, and it worked a bit, but was still not as open as I’d have liked. Never mind, on to the new topic! It’s on Pets, and I’ll write the plan tomorrow.

This afternoon I worked solidly on Irregular Webcomic! I made 10 new strips, using the photos I took a few weeks ago. I now have a full 3-week buffer, which will hopefully give me time to write new strips and take more photos before it runs out.

Tonight was lesson 3 in my current instance of the Creative Thinking/Board Game Design class. This is where the course gets really interesting and fun, as we converge down the brainstorming ideas we did last week and come up with a theme for the game we’ll be designing. After the three students voted, we had two theme ideas on equal footing: Colonising lands, and “a shiny crystal ball”. I did a tie-break and selected what I think is the more interesting option, the crystal ball. So… we’re designing a board game about crystal balls!

We’ve already thought of one possible rules mechanic. During the game set up, you lay out a series of cards face down, which represent things that happen on future turns of the game, and by using a crystal ball you get to look at a future card. So you know what will happen on that turn. Then you can use that knowledge to your advantage. Perhaps the rules require you to reveal or hint something about the future to the other players, or perhaps you can bluff about it. Next week we’ll work on more mechanics and refining the game rules into something workable.

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