Adventure Overview
Players: Morton, Faust and Jazz.
Enemies: Diablo, his undead minions and several fictional enemies.
Started: With a Deep Space tradition and work reports.
Ended: As Morton fled from Muradin's anger.
The King claimed the Sunstone had been stolen from the castle several years ago by the evil wizard, Mephisto. But with brave men such as The Warrior, the King was confident that the stone could soon be recovered. The Thief was plainly scornful of the Warrior's abilities, but almost too busy stealing things to pay him any mind. Jazz wasn't the only one involved in some very mediocre role-playing. Muradin Bronzebeard was having some trouble getting into the character of a sissy Elf enchantress. Diablo suggested he should modify his voice to fit in better with the character, but this only made the dwarf grumpier. Fortunately for all involved, the festivities were interrupted before Muradin could fully express his anger. One of the King's guards stumbled into the room and collapsed, something protruding from his back. Gulstamp rushed to investigate, and quickly denied any possibility that this object was a knife. It was, he said, a tooth ripped fresh from the mouth of a dragon. The room was thrown into a panic by this statement. When pressed, the King admitted that Mephisto was said to control some sort of Dragon. Such talk was cut short when several windows in the hall shattered. Death Knights lept through and began attacking the crowd rather indiscriminantly. The King's reaction was to hide under his chair.
Gulstamp had a more effective plan. Adopting an even heavier Scottish accent, he shouted for the cleric to use his magic. Sure enough, the cleric's holy incantations destroyed a sizeable number of the undead. Using metagaming skills, Faust noted that the exact incantation Diablo used for the cleric's actions might actually be useful against real undead. Keeping that in mind, Faust had the Thief attack with his daggers. He even used his special rules lawyer ability to claim that thieves had an innate bonus against Death Knights. Arch enemy or something. This allowed him to gain a +15 hit. Despite such valiant measures, the Thief was taken down by the Knights. Having your character die could be very traumatizing, and had a big negative impact on Faust's already fragile sanity. Not surprisingly, Greenthorn sought to protect and thus impress Harle, but she had already disappeared from the room with an amazing backflip. Frustrated, Greenthorn instead turned his amazing dice on the Death Knights. Before long, all the enemies had been defeated. The King emerged from his cowering to congratulate the heroes. In fact, considering their valor, he decided to charge them with recovering the Sunstone from Mephisto. The Warrior was certainly up for this, but Gulstamp was not. He declared it shameful that the King was willing to let his own greed get ahead of the welfare of his people. He declared that it was more important to hunt down the dragon that was preying on the people. Muradin's Elf Enchantress decided to accompany Gulstamp, and the two stalked from the room. The King seemed unconcerned, and directed the Warrior, the Thief and Greenthorn to Mephisto's fortress.
At this point, the two doors in the gaming room opened. The dark voice of Diablo informed Muradin and Gulstamp to take the door on the right, while Faust, Morton and Jazz were to take the other. Now split into two groups, the PCs proceeded to another room that was very much like the one they had just left, but a bit darker and containing only one door onward. After they had sat down at yet another table, Diablo explained that they were now in the wilderness, en route to Mephisto's dark fortress. The group had now started a fire, and was waiting for dawn before proceeding on their way. The Warrior was just sitting down for a bite of meat, when he was suddenly grabbed by a branch of an evil tree. Breaking free required a strength check, which was actually fairly easy with Morton's clear dice. This gave Greenthorn the chance to use his Elven Lore. An successful roleplaying check later (which was unusual for Jazz), Greenthorn went on a rant about how nature had to be respected, dude. Peace with the trees, else they might STRIKE BACK! Due to this success, Jazz only lost a small amount of sanity for this clearly ridiculous use of the power that was Elven Lore. Growing impatient from all this talk, the Warrior gruffly declared that they should get moving. A short amount of moving later, they found themselves on the outskirts of Mephisto's fortress. It was a large, imposing stone structure. The only gate was guarded by several nasty looking monsters. As such, the Thief decided that they should climb the walls instead. Unfortunately, with the incredible purple dice, making the necessary dex check proved impossible for Faust. The tumble not only damaged his character, but his character's inability to climb also weighted heavily on his sanity. Fortunately, Greenthorn had no problem climbing the wall, thanks to Jazz's ambiguous dice. Once at the top of the wall, the Elf was easily able to lower a rope for the rest of his group.
Now that they were all on top of the walls, the three adventurers could see a way to enter the fortress itself via a tower door. Unfortunately, getting there would require crossing a walkway that was at least four feet wide. Being big and uncoordinated, the Warrior had a lot of problems with this task. Fortunately, Morton made the roleplaying check necessary to portray the Warrior's unease without losing much sanity over his character's horrible balance. None of the other characters had any trouble crossing the walkway, for obvious reasons. Before long, they had entered the dark passages of the Fortress, and were searching for the treasure chamber that might contain the Sunstone. Morton demanded to know where it was located, though everyone else continually responded in character. The pilot wasn't interested in any stone found in the Roleplaying world, but instead in the real world, and expressed his frustration by kicking Diablo's screen, thus sparking shouts to kill the DM. Diablo only laughed, noting this was the reason he had switched to a new DM's screen - namely a video screen. Recalling the fact that Morton had to work the next day, Diablo suggested they get back to the adventure and hurry things along. Jazz was all for that, ready to end this 'stupid game' and rescue Commander Zaya. As such, the three characters soon found themselves before a large door that they suspected led into the central chamber of Mephisto's castle. Unfortunately, the door was locked. With crude contempt, the Warrior instructed the Thief to pick the lock, since that's what thieves were good for anyway. Making the required roleplaying check, Faust had the Thief retort by pushing the Warrior through the locked door. This was apparently the only thing the Warrior's head was good for.
Indeed, the Warrior's thick head had no difficulty smashing opened the locked door. Stumbling into the room beyond, the Warrior found himself totally out of position, and facing a Manscorpion. As its name would imply, this evil creature was half human, half scorpion and totally dangerous. Fortunately, the Warrior's allies were there to back him up. The preliminary rounds of battle were interrupted by a shout from Muradin Bronzebeard, who claimed he had a +4 Knife vs. Manscorpions. Enraged, Diablo shouted that he wasn't even there. After taking a moment to settle the situation with Muradin, he returned to the context of the protagonists. It wasn't long before the Manscorpion was defeated, and the heroes were able to enter the chamber. It was large, unfurnished and empty. However, there was a door leading onwards. With that, the door swooshed open. But contrary to the initial impressions of Faust, Morton and Jazz, it was actually the door within their own gaming room which opened. They had difficult distinguishing this reality from the one presented in El Diablo's dark game, which only goes to show how Satan's game can drawn sanity and reason. Regardless, the three players eventually returned to their metagaming reality, and proceeded into the next room of Diablo's ship. This one was actually different from any they had previously visited, although it did still have Diablo's DM screen hanging on the wall. Aside from that, this room was filled with many mirrors. And it wasn't empty. To Jazz's delight, Harle was waiting for them.
However, according to the dark voice of Diablo, Harle was much more than a simple jester. With a laugh, she introduced herself as Mephisto, the evil mage who had been plaguing this land for centuries. Both Faust and (shockingly) Jazz managed to make the roleplaying check associated with meeting this traitorous battle. But Morton would not be drawn deeper into the game, and remained strictly out of character, demanding that Harle tell him the location of the Sunstone. The crafty jester claimed it was hidden in her fortress, though a frustrated Morton suspected once again that this was once again an in-game response. In retaliation, he had the Warrior attack the evil Mephisto. The Thief and Greenthorn follow suit, though Jazz was certainly reluctant to do so. In response, Harle lept forward and delivered a powerful uppercut to Morton's jaw. Growling with rage, Morton was about to have the Warrior retaliated, when he made the metagaming check needed to realise that he had actually, in reality, been struck. As such, he tossed aside his dice and reached for his autoblaster. Jazz made a similar realisation, but Faust was too deep in character, and continued the Thief's futile attack on Harle. As Faust sat on the floor and carefully rolled all the necessary dice, Morton and Jazz fought around him. Harle unleashed a powerful Phoenix Attack that almost made it appear that she had turned into a dragon. Despite this powerful attack, and her crazy dancing, Morton and Jazz were able to drop her, especially when Faust finally realised what was going on, and joined the battle. Diablo continued his narration as if this had all been part of the game, stating that Mephisto now transformed into a massive dragon. It looked like their characters would have to leap into action once again. Fortunately, all of Faust's earlier attacks had actually been doing damage to their in-game opponent. It was only due to this supplementary damage that they were able to overcome their imaginary foe. Despite it, both the Warrior and Greenthorn went down, while the Thief was on the verge of doing so. And if Faust lost his character again, he would surely snap. Fortunately, the Dragon's death marked the end of their first D&D adventure. As the exit from the room of mirrors opened, Diablo declared that he would later be assigning his experience. In the interim, the time had come for Faust to deliver the Book of the Dead.
The room they entered was large, and decorated dramatically with red curtains and symbols of the occult. The three were joined by Gulstamp and Muradin, who entered from a different passage. The dwarf, in particular, was extremely pleased to drop the sissy persona of the Elf Sorceress. He was even more pleased to see the giant stone suspended near the room. The Sunstone was huge, transparant crystal attached to the roof with several power cables. Apparently, it was actually the power source of Diablo's Second Edition spacecraft. Though this was extremely interesting to Morton, Jazz and Faust's attention was drawn elsewhere. A dark throne sat in one corner of the room, and standing nearby was the masked form of Diablo. He stood near a slab a onyx, upon which Commander Zaya was tied. She still appeared to be unconscious. Holding his battle-scythe inches from her throat, Diablo ordered Faust to hand over the book. The mortician started to approach with his makeshift decoy, but Diablo stopped him with a gesture. He instead ordered one of his best gamers to bring him the book. About eight of this geeky and greasy gamers emerged from behind the curtain, laughing about how much they enjoyed calculating encumbrance, and attacking the darkness. One of them stepped forward to take the book. Faust knew that it wouldn't fool Diablo at close distance, and had to think fast. Fortunately, Jazz was up to the task. He declared that this whole D&D game was 'dumb', earning the wrath of Diablo and his team of crack games. All the same, Jazz presevered in stating that there had been much cooler roleplaying systems at his University, such as one basedon the Galaxy of Spherus itself. Diablo's rage seemed to sheath his whole body in burning flame as he defended his own custon rulesystem. In so doing, he also bashed this Spherus system, noting that it couldn't be hardcore, and any GM that ran such a campaign must be weak in foolish. This was a bad move for the necromancer. He, of all people, should have known better than to enrage a GM. As such, the true GM of this game brought down some patented DM Lightning on Diablo, piercing several layers of reality to do so.
With Diablo off balance, the heroes quickly began their attack. Diablo was challenged by Faust and Frankenstein, and the three quickly engaged in a Necromancy duel, laced with insults about Diablo's use of an undead Armadillo. Meanwhile, the eight games unleashed their combined geekiness on all heroes present, most of whom couldn't muster the willpower to face this devastating attack unscathed. Morton responded with several bursts of autoblaster fire, while Jazz pulled one of the numerous combs from his giant afro and used them as throwing knives. Oddly enough, this was actually his most powerful move at the moment. Muradin, of course, let loose with his hammer, while Gulstamp brought in his magic, otherwise known as Psi-Fire, and switched his accent frequently to restore his powers. Though this decimated the gamers, some were still up to repeat their geeky assault. Muradin's response was to engage his Avatar, and slowly begin to grow. Jazz and Gulstamp shared the same response: groaning in pain, as both were near collapse. Meamwhile, Faust was finding Diablo to be more than a match for his necromancy powers. In fact, his foe even called on his own zombie, who was known as Mordenkainen's Faithful Hound. This large zombie dog was able to chew down Frankenstein, while Diablo's 'No-Life King' technique brought Faust down to defeat. Fortunately, by that point Morton was ready to intercede with timely autoblaster attacks that ripped apart the Faithful Hound, and left Diablo badly wounded. Bursting into flame once more, Diablo claimed that they would need magic +1 weapons to hurt him. Or something. But there was no DMing technique that could protect him from the grumpiness of a giant Muradin Bronzebeard. A massive blow from his hammer sent Diablo spinning into a wall, where his flames quickly set the curtains on fire.
With the battle won, Jazz wanted to be the first to rescue the 'damsel in distress'. Sliding up to the slab, Jazz quickly untied Commander Zaya, though she remained comatose. Meanwhile, Morton and Muradin were arguing over who would get to keep the Sunstone. Noting his massive size, Muradin declared himself the only one capable of reaching the Stone, thus he felt he should get to keep it. Once he had it, he would finally have the power source he'd been seeking for so long. Morton obviously didn't agree. Gulstamp raised a different topic. He noted that the whole room was on fire, including Diablo's chair. It had spread around the curtains, and now the whole chamber was surrounded in blazing flame. Alarm bells started to go off. Though Morton and Muradin would surely have had no trouble leaping through the wall of flames, such an action would very likely be fatal for Faust, Jazz and Gulstamp. But what else could be done? Fortunately, Morton made the last metagaming check of the adventure. The room was on fire, and the Sunstone was made out of ice. With Muradin's help, he instructed the Dwarf to rip it free from the ceiling, claiming he would catch it when it fell. Obviously, this proved impossible, and the stone instead shattered on the floor. A blizzard of frosty shards swirled about the room instantly extinguishing the fire. They were now free to go, and Morton certainly did so, after grabbing the largest remaining chunk of the Sunstone. An enraged Muradin pursued as far as the door of the chamber, but was still far too big to follow Morton through it. And judging from his current state of anger, it would probably take the Dwarf some time to calm down and shrink back to his normal size. Thus did the heroes exit Diablo's ship, and in so doing, left behind his darkly addictive world of Dungeons & Dragons.
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