
The unhinged jabberings of he who the Internet knows as Dr. Bedlam, aka Tom O'Bedlam, aka Tom O. Bedlam from Facebook. Because Facebook didn't like "Dr." as a first name. Formerly a gaming blog, now my last refuge. At least until Blogspot decides to rearrange their shit and I have to pick up again...
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Social Skills for Gamers: Part Four

Social Skills For Gamers, Part Three

Social Skills for Gamers: Part Two

Beware of Dwarves
The orcs moved in. Strangely, they ignored the Dancing Dwarf in favor of stripping Tizerk's corpse and perhaps making soup out of him. They paid no attention to DD as they casually sheathed their weapons and argued about who'd get the ring and who'd get the bow as they moved forward.




"What is UP with you nitwits?" screamed a goblin. "There's THIRTY of you idiots, and ONE of HIM! KILL HIM!"

"WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?" screamed the goblin. "There's ONE DWARF, you pack of utter morons! WHY IS HE STILL ALIVE?"
"Dwarf?" said the orcs. They looked around. "What dwarf?" DD took advantage of the fracas to slip the Ring of Regeneration onto Tizerk's finger... not realizing it wouldn't heal wounds that had occurred when he wasn't wearing it. By now, the rest of the group was beginning to get antsy, and had moved into the far end of the tunnel. "This is stupid," said one of the orcs, truly a mental giant among his kind. "If there was a dwarf, and he was invisible, Zog there wouldn't be able to see him, either. Therefore, there is no dwarf. And did Zog just call us a bunch of names?"
All the orcs turned to look at Zog. "But... but," sputtered Zog the Goblin, "THERE'S THE DWARF! HE'S RIGHT THERE! HE'S RIGHT--"
And as the orcs gleefully slaughtered their most outspoken critic, the group collected poor Tizerk and sneaked out the way they came...
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
The Colossus of Ylourgne
One of the neater things TSR ever published was the old Castle Amber module.
It had nothing to do with the Roger Zelazny novels. It was a rather unique Dungeons and Dragons adventure based on the works and worlds of fantasy author Clark Ashton Smith, and it was a doozy, containing mysteries, puzzles, monsters, planar travel, and at one point required the party to time travel in order to solve a mystery. At this point, this post will take two forms: the black text explaining what the party did, as opposed to the red text quoting from the Smith original story...
Upon successfully obtaining the Potion of Time Travel, the party, in their quest to escape from a parallel universe (medieval France) and return to the Forgotten Realms, set forth to the capital of the province, Vyones, in order to seek out the Viper-Circled Mirror from the wizard Gaspard du Nord.
Unfortunately, en route, they encountered a terrified curate, fleeing from his monastery – the last survivor. The monastery had been destroyed by the necromancer Nathaire, in the body of a hideous horror, the Colossus!
“In the interim, several monks of the Cistercian brotherhood, watching the grey wall of Ylourgne at early dawn with their habitual vigilance, were the first, after Gaspard, to behold the monstrous horror created by the necromancers.”
“Then, with both hands, the colossus tore loose an immense rock that was deeply embedded in the hillside; and lifting this rock, he flung it at the stubborn walls. The tremendous mass broke in an entire side of the chapel; and those who had gathered therein were found later, crushed into bloody pulp amid the splinters of their carven Christ.” ---Clark Ashton Smith, The Colossus of Ylourgne
The party hurried along the King’s Road north, to Vyones, finding the town in an uproar, and the Viceroy hard pressed to maintain order. Caravans of the wealthy and noble were headed south, and they’d commandeered most of the province’s standing military to escort them! The party did what they could to help… until summoned to the chambers of the Viceroy’s chief advisor… the wizard Gaspard du Nord. Du Nord had once been a pupil of Nathaire’s, and had a secret weapon that might help against the hideous horror…
“Working feverishly by the light of the westering moon and a single dim taper, Gaspard assembled various ingredients of familiar alchemic use which he possessed, and compounded from these, through a long and somewhat cabalistic process, a dark-grey powder which he had seen employed by Nathaire on numerous occasions. He had reasoned that the colossus, being formed from the bones and flesh of dead men unlawfully raised up, and energized only by the soul of a dead sorcerer, would be subject to the influence of this powder, which Nathaire had used for the laying of resurrected liches.”
“Gaspard made a considerable quantity of the mixture, arguing that no mere finger-pinch would suffice for the lulling of the gigantic charnel monstrosity. His guttering yellow candle was dimmed by the white dawn as he ended the Latin formula of fearsome verbal invocation from which the compound would derive much of its efficacy. The formula, which called for the cooperation of Alastor and other evil spirits, he used with unwillingness. But he knew that there was no alternative: sorcery could be fought only with sorcery.” ---Clark Ashton Smith, The Colossus of Ylourgne
A bargain was struck: Gaspard would surrender the Viper-Circled Mirror if the group would aid him in laying low his former master. Armed with three pouches of the necromantic powder, and their own spells, the group set out for Ylourgne at all speed, hoping to head the monster off before it could attack the city.
They almost made it.“A cloud of arrows, visible even at that distance, rose to meet the monster, who apparently did not even pause to pluck them from his hide. Great boulders hurled from mangonels were no more to him than a pelting of gravel; the heavy bolts of arbalests, embedded in his flesh, were mere slivers.”
“Nothing could stay his advance. The tiny figures of a company of pikemen, who opposed him with out-thrust weapons, swept from the wall above the eastern gate by a single sidelong blow of the seventy-foot pine that he bore for a cudgel.” ---- Clark Ashton Smith, The Colossus of Ylourgne
“His head was level with the tower, and his eyes flamed like wells of burning brimstone as he drew near. His lips were parted over stalactitic fangs in a hateful snarl; and he cried out in a voice like the rumbling of articulate thunder: "Ho! Ye puling priests and devotees of a powerless God! Come forth and bow to Nathaire the master, before he sweeps you into limbo!" “ – Clark Ashton Smith, The Colossus of Ylourgne

They knew that the Colossus’ backpack contained Nathaire’s apprentices… all necromancers themselves, who could heal Nathaire as quickly as he took damage. Plainly, the first step was to destroy them while the Colossus was distracted. Using spells, they severed the straps and blasted the wizards within. Meanwhile, the knight Navarre, using the Hammer of Hermes, launched himself at the monster’s shoulder, hoping to grab hold and cast his pouch of powder into the monster’s nose!
Didn’t quite work that way. Lacking any practice with the Hammer, he successfully thwacked himself into the monster’s back, and got its attention. The horror turned, and found the remainder of the party barbecuing his pupils!
Scott and Nathan narrowly avoided being hammered flat with the mighty pine club (tokens were spent). Meanwhile, Navarre clambered higher on the monster’s back, using tent pegs to crawl onto the monster’s shoulder… (he can be seen, wearing green armor and green shield, in the picture below; the purple caped figure wielding green fire is Nathan.)
"Draw nearer, Nathaire, if indeed it be you, foul robber of tombs and charnels," he taunted. "Come close, for I would hold speech with you." ---Clark Ashton Smith, The Colossus Of Ylourgne
…and it was then that the monster finally realized someone was on his back. He seized Navarre and began to squeeeeeeeze!
Nathan summoned the Hammer of Hermes to his hand! The weapon lay forgotten at the base of the city walls! It leapt to the air, and tore back to its master’s hand…. punching straight through the monster’s thigh! The monster screamed… and began to draw breath…
…and the party flung their pouches of powder into the monster’s face! Scott immediately triggered the spell designed to return the souls of the dead to their stolen bodies – and then, inspired…. Blessed the creature!
The monster stopped. It looked confused. It dropped the near-dead Navarre from a twenty-foot height, doing him no good at all.
“The anger was erased from the mighty, contorted mask, as if from the face of a dead man; the great cudgel fell with a crash to the empty street; and with drowsy, lurching steps, and listless, hanging arms, the giant turned his back to the cathedral and retraced his way through the devastated city."
"He muttered dreamily to himself as he went; and people who heard him swore that the voice was no longer the awful, thunderswollen voice of Nathaire, but the tones and accents of a multitude of men, amid which the voices of certain of the ravished dead were recognizable. And the voice of Nathaire himself, no louder now than in life, was heard at intervals through the manifold mutterings, as if protesting angrily."
"Climbing the eastern wall as it had come, the colossus went to and fro for many hours, no longer wreaking a hellish wrath and rancour, but searching, as people thought, for the various tombs and graves from which the hundreds of bodies that composed it had been so foully reft. From charnel to charnel, from cemetery to cemetery it went, through all the land; but there was no grave anywhere in which the dead colossus could lie down."
"Then, towards evening, men saw it from afar on the red rim of the sky, digging with its hands in the soft, loamy plain beside the river Isoile. There, in a monstrous and self-made grave, the colossus laid itself down, and did not rise again. “ ---- Clark Ashton Smith, The Colossus of Ylourgne
The adventure ended with a crazed three-day party, the payment of a substantial reward from the grateful populace of Ylourgne, and (as the party was leaving), the apparent construction of a statue of the three of them in the town square… the Saviours of Ylourgne!
“Of Gaspard du Nord, who had been the saviour of the province, it was related that he lived in much honour to a ripe age, being the one sorcerer of that region who at no time incurred the disapprobation of the Church.” – Clark Ashton Smith, The Colossus of Ylourgne
http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/27/the-colossus-of-ylourgne for the whole text of the original story!
The Battle Of Bulette Pass: An Exercise in Group Storytelling
Part One. The bulette has attacked the group while traveling through the mountain pass out of the Battle of Bones, en route to a treasure site somewhere in the Anauroch Desert. Miser the Minstrel has had the crap beat out of him, and has retreated back into the wagon. Todd the Barbarian has had the crap beat out of him, and is on the ground in front of the wagon, barely alive (behind the bulette).
Yes, Tizerk, your horse is fine.
Meanwhile, Redgar sneaked out of the back of the wagon, flanked the beast, and whacked it a good one, getting its attention. Father Anderson, holding the torch, is seen to the left of the wagon, having had the crap beat out of him, too. Meredith the Druid is visible at far left, using her Bag of Boulders to pelt the beast with mega-sling-stones. Ixchel the Mage is not visible, as he is hidden in the wagon, poking his head and arm out every turn to launch a spell at the monster, then quickly withdrawing to safety.Part Two. After having the crap beat out of him, Redgar is swallowed whole on a natural twenty. The monster then goes after the source of pain in his left buttock (Father Anderson and Meredith); Anderson is closest, and gets attacked. Ixchel continues to pop out, launch spells, and pop back inside, like a demented Whack-A-Mole that shoots back. It is somewhere around this time that Snig the Goblin is seen, hanging onto the monster’s underbelly and trying to hack through its armor. The group yells at him to get out from under the thing, which he does.
Part Three. The group disperses to raid assorted fast food joints, regrouping a half hour or so later.
Part Four. Snig does a Legolas Maneuver, charging up the monster’s tail onto its back, drops prone, and begins using his daggers as pitons, to move forward onto the monster’s face, closer to its vulnerable eyes. Redgar is taking heavy damage from the monster’s digestive juices and constricting stomach. He solves this by tearing open a bag of caltrops, hoping to give the monster indigestion. This works, but also has the effect of turning the monster’s guts into something resembling a cheese grater, in which Redgar is now being abraded and squeezed to death. Meanwhile, angry and in great pain, the monster attacks Father Anderson, bulldozing Todd and knocking the wagon aside, nearly onto Miser (seen at right). Critically injured, Father Anderson desperately looks for a way out – and notices Todd’s battleaxe, which is still embedded in the monster’s armored forehead…
… and Father Anderson leaps onto the monster’s head, seizing the axe, nearly losing a foot when he uses the thing’s lower lip as a springboard. He is now in one of the few places on the map where the thing cannot bite him… but he’s in deep trouble if it decides to start burrowing again!
Meanwhile, Snig claws his way closer, closer, to the monster’s eye – STRIKES – misses, and promptly fails his reflex save. He’s sliding forward, right toward’s the angry beast’s mouth! Fortunately, Father Anderson is in the way, and his ears provide fine safety handles. He finds himself nose to nose with Anderson, terrifiedly clutching the cleric’s head for dear life. Anderson is just as terrifiedly clutching the axehandle. Redgar, dying, begins frantically kicking the monster’s tonsils around with his heavy boots---
---and Todd, still axeless, charges around behind the monster and whacks it in the butt as hard as he can with his mighty Gauntlet of Fury!
---and the mortally wounded (and VERY nauseous) bulette projectile-vomits Redgar some thirty or forty feet (far right). Redgar takes serious damage from this; imagine a flexible cheese grater suddenly and violently giving birth to a large fully armored fighter, and you’ll have a clue.The monster collapses, convulsing, dying, heaving its last.
Miser turns and runs towards Redgar, beginning a healing spell under his breath. The monster gags and coughs, one last time. A blast of blood and phlegm, studded with a great many iron caltrops, erupts with the monster’s dying breath.
Miser catches the edge of the moist shotgun-blast, and is knocked ass over teakettle, although his injuries are minor.
Todd, feeling very pleased with himself, roars the Name, to summon his mighty magical axe back to his hand… having completely forgotten the purpose it serves at the moment.
The axe ploughs a trench up the dying monster’s forehead, up and over its back, down its spine, and right at Todd’s face, taking Father Anderson and Snig with it. Todd glances up and sees his axe, with a goblin’s butt poised right above it, screaming right for his face.
Todd blinks twice, and promptly flings himself on his back, using his Uncanny Dodge.
The axe plows into the ground above Todd’s head, stopping cold. The axe haft catches the plummeting Father Anderson in the belly, stunning him badly. He falls on the unfortunate Snig.
And lo, there is much rejoicing.
Left to Right: Todd, Ixchel, Snig, Fr. Anderson, Meredith, Redgar, Miser, and a raccoon.
Friday, July 9, 2010
About Those Cannons...
The Gonzalans are mighty damn proud of their cannon. They keep it in a special building in one of their city parks, and you can go and see it there. I've seen it; my old man lives in Gonzales, and one year I went to go visit him in early October, which is when they have their COME AND TAKE IT festival, and you see flags and cannons everywhere. They do this to commemorate one of the first battles of the Texas Revolution.
Y'see, back during the Empresario period, when the settlers were moving into Texas with the blessing of the Mexican government, and agreeing to be loyal Mexicans, the ones out Gonzales way had a problem. Namely, the local Indians -- things were a bit frazzled, and the Indians were taking potshots at the settlers, stealing their cattle, and suchlike. So the Mexican government sent them a cannon, so's to defend themselves.
Now, when you see that cannon -- which remains in that special building in Gonzales -- they don't let you touch it. They don't let you NEAR it; they're afraid some yahoo is going to steal the thing or do something stupid like try and load and shoot it, which is very bad for old cannons; they can sometimes burst if improperly fooled with, and since this particular cannon has great significance, they don't let ANYONE near the thing. So when I saw it, I did not see it with anything else near it to give it scale.
So we went to the Texas Historical Museum in Austin this morning, and they had a replica of the "Come And Take It" cannon... just like the original one! Y'see, when the Mexican government began to worry about all these settlers getting uppity, they decided that maybe those Gonzales folks shouldn't have a CANNON sitting around. So they sent a detachment of the army to go and fetch it back.
Bad move. These were Southerners, and former Americans, and this move was openly insulting -- it demonstrated a lack of trust, bad manners, and ... well, frankly, made the settlers ponder the idea that perhaps the Mexican government wasn't going to respect their rights as laid out in the Constitution of 1824. (Later on, a guy named Santa Anna would abolish that constitution and try to become Dictator of Mexico, but we're getting ahead of ourselves.)
Anyway, the Gonzalans worked themselves up into a good frenzy, and made themselves a banner inviting the Mexicans to come and take that cannon back... if they thought they were baaaad enough! (That banner is famous throughout Texas. The original is long lost... but I often wonder, if it was intended as a message to the Mexican Army, why wasn't it printed in Spanish? Anyway, a picture of the exhibit in the museum:
Yup, I'm impressed. Come and get it, suckers! I got somethin' fer ya, RIGHT HERE! And they loaded up that cannon (and a great many other shootin' irons) and made things uncomfortable for the Mexican detachment, which retreated after a short battle. The Texas Revolution was underway! Yee-haw! Another view of that exhibit:
..."Um... honey," said my dear wife. "Is that the cannon?"
"It's a replica," I said. "The real one's back in Gonzales."
"Oh, yes," she said, reading the plaque. "An exact copy, made from the original... and it was that big?"
I thought about it. I've seen the original, as I mentioned... but I think I also mentioned that they don't let you NEAR the thing. You have to look at at from a fair distance... and there's nothing near it to let you really get an idea of its SIZE... and at this point, Becca knelt near the replica cannon... ...and I realized the truth. The first battle of the Texas Revolution, a terrible and bloody war in which many, many proud soldiers and innocent bystanders lost their lives...
...was fought over a cannon barely two feet long and too small for a woman to stick her hand in the muzzle.
At this point, it occurred to me that maybe there was another reason they don't want you to get too close to the one in Gonzales... and why they won't let you take pictures...
Thursday, July 8, 2010

Via: Motorcycle Insurance