After an arduous journey, Sir Geoffery arrived at the Bright
Stag tavern. Here although he dined very nicely and enjoyed sampling the local
ales, he was met by a host of locals, mainly aged, warning him to turn back,
whilst arming him with protective trinkets (no charge). The brave Sir Geoffery
was undaunted.
He continued on to the drear castle and immediately fumbled his
very first saving roll, thus running into a dragon! Fortunately his charming manner and good
looks convinced the dragon that he was cut above the native riff-raff the
dragon normally devoured. It soon transpired that he really needed to speak at
least a little dragon. I hadn’t considered languages but as his INT is 18 and
his experience (L6) is not inconsiderable, I decided that he could manage a bit
of pidgin dragon. In this way he learned that he should not be hasty to take
decorations from bony types – cryptic!
Making his way on up to the castle, he was confronted with a
seemingly unopenable skull gate towering above him. He ignored this and also a
side door but I was caused to consider talents. I hastily took both lock picking and climbing to
be on the safe side, keeping 4 more in reserve for later.
The valiant knight then circled the castle, first to the
left (finding a sinister shape that he shied away from, taking a hint of its
potential for destruction) before going round to the right and uncovering a
secret door. Ah, what keen eyes you have, Sir Geoffery!
This took him into the castle itself whereupon he was
confronted by a ghostly apparition, intent on his immediate demise! Despite
despatching the spectre in one brief round of combat, he suffered a loss on 1
STR and 1 CON for being in contact for a round and also suffered 3 points of
spite damage. The STR point, I reluctantly realised, took Sir Geoffery down to
59 and so to L5, with the giddy heights of L6 a rapidly fading dream!
Then he found another secret door and made his way upstairs to
a room which clearly had once been grand to the point of luxury but which now
was in decay. This room, Sir Geoffery now discovered, was home to a nasty,
disguised fiend! Once the deception had been penetrated, it took the bold Sir
Geoffery two rounds to smash this evil one – again he suffered 3 points of
spite damage. He declined a quick exit from the castle via an open window and
then uncovered another secret door – this one back downstairs but, alas, not to
treasure. He was determined to press on.
Let us see where all this spite damage is going to lead Sir Geoffrey to... the more he fights, the more he risks being defeated, even by an inferior foe. That is an excellent rule to calm down overpowerful characters :-)
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