(G306 04/02/2017 via Roll20 - AP, JF(GM), MJ, HK) SS17

(G306 04/02/2017 via Roll20 - AP, JF(GM), MJ, HK) SS17

[Don't blame me! We are running two games now...]

Deary me, I seem to have my notes all in a muddle again. Rollo here, I seem to have written some  of my notes on the back of transcripts that came into my possession that were penned by the famous Pedestal detective...

[Merlock Tomes continues his report]


DAY 278 (13th Nightal)(December) cont ...

I lay in wait at the bottom of the stairs unseen and unchallenged by those brave adventurer's that it was my duty to observe. Fenrir the warlock, Dwerry the sorceress, Durz the Barbarian, Billitoppe the gnomish scout and Arahel the shapeshifting druid.

It was eleven o'clock in the evening now and they appeared to still think that the room they were in was a good place to rest.

This so irritated me, their insistence on camping out in a room with five exits, that I arranged a little surprise for them and lured a gang of marauding skum up from the bowels of the Spike to go and harass them. These were agents of Imaug the Aboleth and I whispered to them, and thus to Imaug himself that the warlock he had nearly snared on Oceanbridge was within his grasp once again. In truth I would be just as happy to see the skum all dead as Imaug is no friend of House Dusklorn.

Initially Fenrir talked them out of attacking. He has a very silver tongue that one and he used it to convince the leader of the skum that he was not the warlock they were after. The leader sent two of his followers to scout ahead, but one came running back chased by an Entomber and a Wraith from the graveyard that lay beyond the room they were all in.

The battle was swift and deadly, Dwerry killed four skum with a single fireball! Arahel decided to play dead, wishing to not waste her energy on an easy fight I assume, while the others killed and chased off the skum, blasted the Entomber to nothing and killed off the wraith the magic missiles.

After that they rolled up into their bedrolls again.

DAY 279 (14th Nightal)(December)

By three in the morning I was bored, so it was with some small happiness I noticed Jajob the Drider had been sent up from below to investigate and report back to House Dusklorn. He had ten or so of his big spiders in attendance. I warned him that the adventurer's camped out in the room above were pretty dangerous but he decided to take a look anyway and squeezed past all the corpses of vampire spawn and skum blocking the stairs.

He came back with his hair singed and all his spiders dead. I gave him a 'told you so' look and he snarled at me as he went back to his lair to wash up and wrangle up more spiders for his entourage.

I continued my vigil and at ten in the morning they were attacked by a gang of gargoyles from the graveyard. This had nothing to do with me, it was purely because they were camped in one of the busiest areas of the Spike.

The gargoyles attacked with acid jars and tanglefoot bags, but were soon either slain or chased off like all the others.

By eleven their magic users were rested enough to continue and they ventured into the graveyard and robbed the mausoleum that was in the right hand corner.

After some skulking about in the corridors around their camp room they found a secret door that lead them up to the 'over look' a small cliff that looked over the graveyard. Here a giant  Desiccator and an undead illithid (a forlorn husk) attacked them.

This was probably their most challenging battle so far as the Desiccator really hammered into Durz and did him a lot of damage. The illithid was quickly dealt with but it took a while to kill the powerful giant.

After that they searched the caves behind the overlook but did not find much.

(G305 28/01/2017 via Roll20 - AP(GM), JF, MJ) RL3

(G305 28/01/2017 via Roll20 - AP(GM), JF, MJ) RL3

 And so we entered the town of Barovia, myself, Mr B, Sylvia, Yli and Tie-Pie.

The first thing we saw, looming out of the fog between the buildings was what looked like three zombies. Sylvia used her spiritual powers to turn them away from us though and they ran off back into the murky streets.

Tie-pie then cast a Fireball spell that exploded above them, lighting up the mist in a most spectacular fashion. Meanwhile, off down a side alley Mr B had found an undead witch sort of thing and started worrying at it. Sylvia turned it as well, making it cower away from us in the dead end of the alley.

From the other direction came some strange large rat creatures, but they were no threat really as by this time I'd summoned up a squad of bears (giving the crocodiles a rest!) and they went and killed the witch and protected us from the rats. With the bears and the flaming sphere that Tie-Pie had summoned and the deadly arrows of Yli they were all soon dealt with.

Once things had settled down and all the undead were now properly dead, it seemed that Tie-Pie was in the mood for some mischief. A chaotic sort of fellow I think, and since I had been instructed to be more like him by my elders and betters I joined in the fun.

It started with him edging his sphere ever closer to me, enough to singe the corner of my cloak. I stepped back, but he kept the sphere on me, so in return I ordered my bears to do a 'Bear Pile On'. All five grappled him to the ground and jumped on him until he was under a massive pile of fur.

Well, after less than a minute the sphere and the bears dispelled and that was the end of that.

We carried on up the street and tried a door to our left. It contained two zombies which Tie-Pie and Yli quickly killed off with magical rays and arrows. I cast Hypothermia on one to finish it off. These were more powerful undead than your average zombie it appeared to me.

I decided it was best just to leave the doors alone and bid us all continue into the centre of town. Through the mist we saw a body lying on the road. As we got closer two large maggot type things rushed at us from the body and attacked.

As battle was joined, more undead nasties joined in, zombies from left and right and flying skulls (Vargouilles I think, like the ones we'd met in the Plane of Shadow). It was a full on assault as we shot back with arrows, magic, clerical magic and bears. There was so much going on  that there was hardly any room to add yet more bears into the carnage so I simply struck out at the  nearest enemies with my scimitar.

Tie-Pie shot the skulls out of the sky with his scorching rays and we rest took on the maggots and zombies. Once he'd dealt with the skulls Tie-Pie cast a Confusion spell in the direction of the remaining undead but the only thing he succeeded in confusing was poor Mr Badger.

He charged up and down the street at top speed, not knowing what to do, snapping at Tie-Pie whenever he rushed past him. In the end though, one of my bears killed the last dire maggot and Mr B recovered. The battle over, we continued on our way.

Good and Evil do not come with labels

Good and Evil do not come with labels

I started to write this at the weekend when the ban came in. It's now the first of February and thankfully the things that I wanted to be said have already been said by the likes of Amber Judd etc. I'll add my voice anyway.

I don't speak for any other Muslim than myself. I converted in 2005, I was completely indifferent to religion prior to that point and I'm still pretty chilled out about it, but after 12 years I identify with and understand Islam pretty well I think. I feel I am a Muslim, let's put it that way.

Us Muslims you know, vary from country to country. Moderate Muslims (like me) from countries such as Indonesia differ from Muslims in Saudi Arabia about the same as a Catholic differs from a Mormon. You can't lump us all into one group. Got that?
You get good and bad Muslims of course, but you get good and bad Christians. The Muslims I know, they want the same thing Christians want, the same thing everyone wants, to life a good happy life.
They chat to people on facebook.
They meet their friends and hang out.
They have all the same hopes and dreams as everyone else.
They know the difference between right and wrong.
They have modern, progressive ways of thinking.
They are not defined by their religion any more than your standard man off the Western street may or may not define himself as a Christian.

I would also like to point out what a red herring Sharia Law is. The far right like to point at it and say that all Muslims want to push Sharia Law onto the world. That's bollocks. I don't for sure. The majority of Muslims don't care, they follow local national laws like everyone else. And where Sharia Law is used, as often as not is does good, helping women divorce abusive husbands for instance.

Another red herring is headscarves. Now, I don't know about all Muslim nations and all Muslim women, so I can only base this observation on the Muslim women that I know. They do not choose to wear a head scarf because they care what men think. Like most women of any religion they choose how they dress based on what other women might think! The head scarf is a choice taken by the women by themselves. Trends in headscarf use come and go. Also, I know women that are so used to wearing headscarves they feel uncomfortable going outside without one on. Rather like going out without trousers on I imagine, and no one wants that.

Forget the extremists, I don't know any, but from your average sampling of Muslims you may find the occasional  one that will argue for a certain way of behaving or a certain way of doing things, but is that any different from a Christian expressing the opinion that people should live life by the Bible?

So, moving on, I like America, I like it's history, I like how it mostly tries to be a good moral nation. I like your literature and your culture. You are honestly a good bunch.

This Muslim Ban though, it doesn't make you look good. People are now aware, as it has been said  already by politicans and pundits, that by putting into place this hasty and ill-conceived ban you have  played straight into the hands of ISIS and other extremists. They must be delighted!

Are you bunch of fannies in the White House right now really that dumb? Or are you trying to spark off a religious war? In a situation like that even moderate peaceful Muslims would become your enemy. What then? Round them up into camps like the Japanese Americans in World War II? Think it through. Unless you already have and this is what you want of course in which case these words are obviously wasted.

To end then, if you really wanted to make America safe, you would not marginalise the 3.3 million Muslims in your country. Whether you like it or not, Islam is a world religion and is here to stay.
We are not your enemy.

In case you are not aware of this fact, 15,000 Americans were killed in shootings last year. Don't you think that's rather a large number? Wouldn't that make any rational person think that something should be done? I'm sure the 2nd Amendment is important to Americans, but maybe some sort of check on people just to be sure they are not mentally ill? What's the measure here? Americans are ok about being killed by other Americans but not by foreigners?

Well, we know there is no political currency in that direction eh? There are no votes in tackling gun control. There are lots of votes in victimising the strange and the foreign though. Truth and logic are just not a factor.

This is the politics of anger, fear and ingorance. At the risk of invoking Godwin's Law here, who else do we know that rose to power on the back of that?

...

Uhh one last thing...

Some Fox News chap (Hannity was it?) said something along the lines of home owners have a right to have a lock on their front door, it is a crime to fit a burglar alarm etc etc. OK, then, to follow that analogy through; what if the person at your front door is a cold and hungry child? You leave them outside to die on your doorstep? Think about it, honestly, imagine going on national TV and saying something like that.