Thursday, November 15, 2012

It Ends! The Undermountains of Madness: Part VI

Following the 'dwarves' information, we unwittingly walked towards our doom.  The path came to a T-junction with both paths going 10' before becoming a room.  We chose left, naturally, and took two steps into the room before Jimbo called for initiative.

Our characters all failed our knowledge checks (a running theme that game), but from Jimbo's scripted description we players knew that we faced a Deepspawn, a foul beast that can birth copies of any race that it has devoured.  That explained the off-dwarves and the poor drow.  It also explained the psuedo-Grimlocks that stood in the room with it.

Combat was fast and fierce, but within four rounds we had another issue.  The room back to the right was spawning new horrors; more undead.  The hallways being only 5' wide (all the better to be defended by dwarves, my dear!), I rushed to the other end and stood stalwart in the doorway.

Brainburn, Paddy, and Gobbler faced the aberration and its children while I fought a cadre of modified skeletons.  Once my turn attempts had run out, I fought with mace and shield.  It took me several rounds but my Cleric eventually cleared out the entire room on his own (a feat usually reserved for Paddy's characters) and returned to my comrades in arms.

I returned to find the Deepspawn and her brood dead.  I also found Paddy's Soulknife locked in mortal combat with Gobbler's Ghoul.  Brainburn did what little he could to aid his brother from another undead mother.

During the fight, Gobbler had rolled poorly and had taken a chunk out of Paddy whilst the mindblade wielder held the mamma in a multi-headlock.  He had taken it poorly.  Once their mutual foe had been vanquished, Paddy turned on the Ghoul.  As Paddy had been Brainburn's initial captor (plus the fact that, in-game, Paddy had been a dick to the flameskull, much moreso than the rest of us), the flaming head had chosen Gobbler's side.

I arrived just in time to see Paddy get the killing blow on Gobbler.  Sighing in frustration, I teleported the three survivors back to the Kingdom for some healing before we broke for the evening.  Having received enough XP to take us to 4, my cleric was ready and rearing to go when the next game session came around a week later. Gobbler was prepared with character number five in hand although Paddy's Soulknife was nowhere in sight.  He had lost the character sheet. 

"Fuck it," he said.  "Creating a new character from scratch is easier."  I found myself running the last starting character alive as Paddy rolled up an Elven Wizard to join Brainburn and I, along with Gobbler's Nixie.  Also, in a rare treat, my brother had joined us for that campaign.

Now, my brother (three years my younger) had gamed with us in the past.  I am quite certain that, at some point, I will cover the games where he was DMing.  He had been a good player but at that junction in life, he had decided that women were more interesting than his brother and friends.  He is thusly dubbed DB Skirtchaser for this blog's purposes.  I'll leave the 'DB' to my readers' fecund imagination.

Adding his Dwarven Barbarian to our greatly bolstered ranks, Skirtchaser joined us as meatshield.  Using my ring of brokeness, I took us instantly back to the room of doom and looted the corpse of Paddy's last character (which he rattled most of the items and money off of by memory) and the re-corpse of the Ghoul.  We also took what few goodies our enemies had possessed. 

Taking the goods to the Kingdom's treasurer to unload our riches (quite a bit, considering how much Paddy carrier on him), we split the enemies' loot evenly but only Brainburn and I got to reap the rewards of party death (that group charter was a brilliant idea).  Brainburn, being nothing more than a flying head, had little to spend his money on that would actually be beneficial, which saddened Jimbo greatly.  Gobbler threw out the idea that we could carve out a hole in his skull and screw in a metamagic rod or two.

Once the laughing had subsided, our flying friendly flame specialist was sprouting a rod of lesser maximize from his forehead.  He had spent extra money to have it designed to appear like a natural boney horn.  The human unicorn, or the flaming humicorn as he was quickly dubbed, was quite proud of his newest extremity.  Having very little to spend my money on, I decided to keep it for 'later'.  Little did I know that later would never come.

We continued our dungeon trudge, fighting random encounters the further we went into the complex that momma Deepspawn had her children carving out.  The only real thing of note that happened that day was the ridiculous amount of time DB Skirtchaser spent texting his girlfriend.  When we broke for food, he left.  Honestly, I think I spent more time describing him here than he spent at the gaming table that day.  Sheesh, some people have their priorities all wrong (says the guy with a date this weekend!).

Returning from food netted us one final encounter against some Grell.  What they were doing in my Kingdom, I have no idea.  We were determined to find out, though.

Initiative was rolled and Paddy, saddened that his own grapple monster was no more, opted instead to blast the beaked bastards with a fireball.  The now-crispy critters went next, grappling Paddy (who was at that precise moment quite displeased with his decision to not remake his Soulknife), Gobbler and myself.  Brainburn, despite his huge penalties, managed to evade the fourth Grell grapple.

I cast Body Blades, a spell I had prepared for just such an eventuality, and was promptly free.  Gobbler attacked as best he could but his Nixie, like the majority of his characters that campaign, failed to be useful.  Going last, the flaming humicorn used his eye-beams of fiery pain to kill the creature holding fast to his spellcasting brethren.  Paddy thanked him before casting a round of magic missiles into the Grell nearest Brainburn once initiative rolled over.  Then the Grells went.  Then Gobbler's Nixie died.

To say that Gobbler was angry would be an understatement as large as the man himself.  I recall dice being lobbed while the rest of us died of laughter.  Once he was calm, he began working on his sixth character for the campaign in about as many sessions while the rest of us avenged his Nixie's death.  We mopped them up quickly, thanks in great part to a second helping of fireball, this time from a more frequent source than Paddy.  Grells dispatched, we travelled to the third level in Undermountain, claiming all we saw in the name of Kingdom.

A few random encounters later, we came to a great pit, easily thousands of feet deep. We returned back home for some further loot selling and the feeding of the Western Watch.  There, Jimbo informed me of the sad story of Dwarf claiming his direct ancestors had once ruled Undermountain.  Sensing a challenge to my claim, we immediately went out to check the validity of these claims (and silence them, if necessary).

We needn't have worried.  His name was Gyud, a fighter of little prominence.  His haggard appearance calmed my anxiety.  He had been haunted by dreams of late about a plain crown with a bloodred gem attached, laying at the bottom of a great chasm.  He wasn't interested in ruling anything but rather felt a familial obligation to not let the thing fall into the clutches of evil.

The threat to the throne thwarted, we took off in search of my new crown.  Gyud was good enough to inform us that it was at the bottom of Belkram's Fall.  His description matched that of the giant chasm we had encountered on our last excursion into level 3.  I returned us there post-haste and we looked down.  I scouted out below but it was designed in such a way that I could not pick out any location well enough to safely teleport us there.

Returning briefly to the Kingdom for some epic climbing gear and back again to the Fall, we were met with sounds from above us.  Gobbler had his sixth character ready.

A halfling Ninja came hurtling at us from the darkness above.  Before we could recover our wits, initiative was rolled and we found ourselves facing Gobbler's pursuers.  The poor bastards were not even memorable enough for me to recall their race! 

Introductions were made off-camera and we began our final descent.  Another bout of unremarkable travel had us eventually reaching Skullport.  We were not as ill-received as I expected.  Paddy wanted to take over the joint but cooler heads prevailed.  After all, as the flaming humicorn informed us, all the flaming skulls without additional appendages functioned as a hivemind.  Jimbo politely informed us that the entire Kingdom trebled could not make a scratch against the forces of Skullport.  Humbled, we gathered what information we needed from the dealers of such things and exited the town.

We travelled further upon our road and faced some more Grell, adults this time, but that was where the campaign ended.  Looking back, I don't know whether to celebrate or cry that things never progressed further.  Hel, I don't even remember why we didn't continue.  I think that things had gotten too out of hand, what with Gobbler's revolving door of characters becoming increasingly more fantastical than the last and all.  Still, I have fond memories of this module and one day hope to take part in that adventure again.  Maybe with Pathfinder rules.  And maybe with a cartographer in tow!

Thursday, November 8, 2012

The Undermountains of Madness: Part V

I have been informed by Jimbo Baggins that my recollection of the events in Undermountain are not entirely accurate, to which I respond, "this is my lie and I'll tell it how I like!" That settled, let me continue my fable.

Okay, so, where were we?  Ah, the ring.  Well, we quickly determined that the ring only worked in the environs of Undermountain.  My attempt to teleport into a brothel from 'back home' having failed, we instead returned to the landing above the magical resetting cave-in.  Specifics help in our group.  We were greeted by a 'woman' of great power.  I use the term loosely because what we really encountered was another living spell.  This one used to be one of Halaster the Mad's (a mage of great renown, for those of you unfamiliar with the Forgotten Realms campaign setting) apprentices.  She confirmed that our visions (the things that brought the original party together.  Remember those?  No?  Me neither.) were indeed of that crazy caster.  He had blown himself up and some portion of Undermountain.  Anyhoo, she was impressed by our antics thus far and wanted to give us a token of her appreciation.  She left and later came back with an intelligent sword.  We thanked her and bamfed away.

Clueless as to what to do with the blade, we decided on selling it.  No use in keeping a 50k+ gp item that no one has a use for, right?  Right.  I don't recall the exact sum we received but damn, did we get rich(er) quick!  I was decked out with a +2 mace and a +3 armour and shield before hitting level 4.

This was also about the point where Gobbler lost his character sheet between sessions.  Seeing just how ineffective his character had been, we opted to retire him to the kingdom (in case we reached sufficiently high enough levels to make him as awesome as Gobbler had planned originally), where he was one of our top 'wizards'.  Thinking long and hard, Gobbler had not been satisfied with waiting until level 20 to become an undead.  So, he picked up the Libris Mortis and made a Ghoul.  Since we had already built up a good relation with Brainburn, Paddy and I said what the Hel and rolled with it.  This would have hilarious ramifications later.

Roleplaying meeting Gobbler's new character went something like this:

Random NPC: "Sir, we have received a report from our western outpost (Squeemish the Mimic, who was constantly fed a diet of our enemies) that there has been a creature skulking about lately."

Paddy: "Let's go 'investigate' (our euphemism for kill everything we find).

Me: "Agreed.  No incursion to my territory will stand!"

*Teleports group to western outpost*

Me: "Squeemish, what have you seen?"

Squeemish: "Dead thingz hauntz the corridoorz."

Brainburn: "Like me?"

Squeemish: "More grey, less flamez."

*Searching ensues, carefully avoiding the nearby statue of whirlwindy, stabbity death*

*A wild Ghoul appears!*

Gobbler: "Don't taze me bro!  I won't eat your people.  I'll just gnaw upon your enemies."

Group: "Welcome aboard!"

The new character settled in, we teleported back to the kingdom and plotted our next move.  We decided "see what is beyond the room of rubble-rumble" was our best course of action.

'porting back, just past the stairs, we continued on our quest.  Several uneventful rooms later, we found another empty storeroom.  This time, however, Jimbo called for me to make a Spot check.  I had few skill ranks as a Cleric, but I did have high wisdom.  A natural twenty combined with a 20 Wis netted me a 25 result, just good enough to spot the door hidden in the stone.  It opened up into a hallway which descended into massive chamber 80' high.  Cobwebs were everywhere but I detected no evil.  Dwarven runes marked the room as the Hall of the Black Helm, which sadly meant nothing to either me or my character.  Ranks in Knowledge: Local were needed if I was to be a competent king.

Searching the room, we found a simple stone chair (large but not quite a throne) with a dented black helm and battered bastard sword. Seeing how the room had obtained its name (and detecting no magic in the items) we continued our search. Scrawled on the walls in several different languages were directions on how to get to a nearby merchant encampment. Despite the layers of dust and obvious passage of time elsewhere in the room, the chalk messages were recent.

Having nothing better to do, we followed the directions and headed towards the camp. Along the way, we were greeted by messages such as “the merchants are heavily armed” and “announce yourself loudly if you don't want your riches to line merchant pockets”. We laughed heartily at the last one.  Still, precaution is rarely bad in the RPG world.

Calling out obscenities (loudly!) as we arrived, we were immediately greeted by a 'dwarf' introducing himself as Barundar.  He was dressed elegantly; a special item of note was his glorious black cloak.  Something about the way he kept his beard put me off.  I got the vibe that, whatever else he might be, he certainly wasn't a dwarf.  I quietly informed the party but never outright called the merchant out on it, mostly because he was not alone.

There were three human mercenaries in the faux-dwarf's employ.  They were sparsely equipped for guards so far beneath the surface, despite what the written warnings had advised us of.  That, coupled with the odd feeling about the merchant himself, told me things were very wrong there.  I had no desire to find out how wrong.  Sadly, as in life, I rarely get what I want.

As we were discussing how exactly this merchant was trafficking goods through my kingdom without our knowledge, his cape came to life and began attacking us.  Apparently, the cloth was actually a cloaker and he was rather wroth at our mention of carving our kingdom's riches out of the cave his people once called home.

The merchant and his sellswords revealed themselves as doppelgängers and the fight was on.  That was a particularly gruelling fight, however even superior numbers could not secure victory for our shapeshifting foes and soon I had a fancy new cloak!

We looted the caravan in short order, and by that I mean we tied the wagon across my dwarf's broad shoulders and began the long trip back to the Kingdom, and by that I mean I teleported the whole group back to the predesignated "don't stand in the circle upon penalty of death" area that we had installed recently.  The loot netted us another 15,000 or so golden lions and went towards more kingdomy things.

Profiteering done for the nonce, we blinked and were back in the merchant cave.  We double checked everything, making certain we had missed nothing.  Satisfied, we backtracked our steps into Black Helm Hall.

After a bit of uninteresting travel, we came to a junction.  We had a door on our immediate right and a door down a ways on our left.  Obviously, we went left.  Upon reaching the door, we saw more chalk-messages on the wall.  They said not to attack the statues within and to stay out of the light.  Already having had bad experiences with waking statues, I considered this good advice.  Upon entering, Brainburn informed us that we had entered an area of dead magic.  I argued with Jimbo that, as a caster myself, I should have been aware of the zone.  Once he had showed me that the description specified arcane casters I grumbled about poorly written modules but otherwise shut my mouth.

The room had obviously once been magnificent but some recent disaster had befallen it.  The eastern half of the room was buried under a rockslide.  There was a circle of light in the far east, around which five armoured figures stood silent vigil.  Seeing nothing inside of said light, we decided investigating the other door was a good idea.

Said door led to a room of floating pillars.  There were four of them, each depicting a different race of immense power.  They could be spun on their axis with ease but moving them either horizontally or vertically proved impossible.  With a shrug, we moved on.  One door and two paths led out of the room.  We chose left, which happened to be the door.  We did not travel far, as the room ended in rubble.  Jimbo called for a Knowledge: Dungeoneering check and I was soon telling the other characters about how, despite looking dwarven to the untrained eye, the craftsman ship was quite inferior.

That titbit delivered, we went back to pillar room and took the next left.   This led to another massive chamber that distinguished itself by having two massive carvings of nude women in the distant south end of the room.  It was also incredibly dim, but the groups collective darkvision (Paddy's obtain via Goggles of Night) was unaffected.

We took the first left out of there and found ourselves upon a quartet of sleeping Drow.  We sent in the members of the party who could sneak easily (i.e. everyone but me) and the four dark elves were easily dispatched.  Searching them, we discovered something amiss.  They were not bedecked in the normal Drow custom.  Their clothing was rumpled and dirty and not at all spectacular.  With little in the way of loot, I teleported their remains to the western outpost, who was delighted.  Returning to the group, we continued exploring.

Various lefts later, we came across three 'dwarves', who unsettled me for different reasons but the same underlying reason as the doppelgänger had; they just didn't seem right.

Attempting to speak to them in the tongue of Delzoun yielded no results, although Jimbo told us that they seemed like they were trying really hard to understand.  We switched to common and called out our greetings.  When that failed, we switched first to terran, then to undercommon.  The last gave us results, to an extent anyway.

I pressed them for information about their clan and was rewarded with "they live to the south".  No further details were forthcoming.  They couldn't seem to remember their clan names, nor their own names for that matter.  When frustration set it, Paddy's Soulknife did the talking.

He asked them for information about what they were doing, receiving a "cleaning out the room" for his trouble.  He then switched tactics and asked them if they could provide any information.  They told us that there were creatures "like him" as they pointed first to Brainburn, then to Gobbler's Ghoul.  Warning us to steer clear of them, the 'dwarves' went back to work.  We shrugged and moved towards the direction they had indicated the undead could be found.  Why do we rarely listen to good advice?

Thursday, November 1, 2012

The Undermountains of Madness: Part IV

Holy Steam filled the incredibly short hallway.  If the rust monster had not been punishment enough, Jimbo had another rockslide blocking off the rest of the passage just beyond the rust monster.  When pressed on how it had survived so long in the cave in, our DM just glared at us and began flipping through the monster manual.  We ceased pleading our case and the book was put down.

Back to the blessed vapor.  It was causing our undead companion serious damage.  He fled back down the corridor the way we had come and, now another man short, we did the same.

After a food break, we returned to my blossoming kingdom and chilled for a little while, safe in the knowledge that little could get to us that we did not allow.  A few in-game months passed and the kingdom of 50 was ten times that.  It is amazing what money can buy.

Speaking of, we were all filthy rich.  10 barrels of oil per day at 316 silver per barrel (or, more accurately, 5 copper per pint and 8 pints to the gallon with 79 gallons in a barrel) gave us 316 golden lions a day.  Free.  For eternity.  Even factoring out the cost of purchasing barrels and transportation, we still netted over 290gp a day.  Not a lot for a kingdom, I grant, but enough to cover all the tools necessary to expand our operations. 

Jimbo, perhaps feeling bad over his Rust Monster bullshitery, ruled that the cloaker chasm had nice, deep veins of a multitude of ores, including adamantine.  Things were looking our way.

Once Gobbler had made his new character, a Dwarven True Necromancer, we set out once more.  Making our way back to the corpse of Gobbler's third character, we buried him in a cairn and continued onwards.

We had some minor skirmishes along the way; obviously nothing noteworthy as I cannot recall them.  Eventually, we came across a medium sized cavern.  Eagerly, we entered.

There was an exit hallway and a row of rungs leading into a crawlspace on the wall opposite us. We marched towards the ladder but we were attacked from above by a set of tentacles. I was grappled and initiative was rolled.

Winning initiative, as Paddy's characters usually do, the Soulknife joined me in grappling the beast. No one was going to grapple anything but him, or so he said. With my aid, the roles were reversed. The choker went next, struggling vainly to break free from Paddy's iron grip. Also, there were some noises from the crawlspace beside us.

Gobbler was next, doing what he could to aid our situation, followed by Brainburn. The flameskull moved to investigate the darkened hole above us from where the noises were coming.  His shrieks alerted us to his situation; he had been grappled.  Again.

The turns rolled back around and Paddy proceeded to establish 'pin', and by that I mean he yanked the choker off of the ceiling and brought it crashing down at our feet.  Seeing he had things well in hand, I moved to aid Brainburn, who disappeared into the darkness.  The creature facing Paddy tried vainly to free himself.  Gobbler's Necromancer summoned some undead monstrosity in the hole above us.  Sadly, it was not long for this world. 

Jets of flame spurted out of the narrow opening overhead followed quickly by Brainburn himself.  Apparently, the little devil cast his once daily Fireball and his captor had not approved.

Back to the top again, the Soulknife began truly proving dominance to his foe by slamming him up against the stone ceiling and then forcing him to the ground.  Repeatedly.  The rest of us stood around and watched after that, seeing as how the other beast wasn't coming after us any time soon.  The show went on for a few rounds until finally the poor bastard moved no more.  A choked sob came from the crawlspace and we turned in time to catch a glimpse of our second attacker fleeing back into the hole. 

"No one escapes on my watch!"  With that, Paddy went in.  Gobbler, Jimbo and I nearly fell over laughing when Paddy announced his intention to drag the other creature back out and repeat the process over again.  We could hear the cries of terror from the second victim as the Soulknife drug it back out into the main cavern.  Recalling Chokers are semi-intelligent, and seeing as it was already half Kentucky-fried, I had a better idea.

I informed the group of my intention to interrogate our prisoner, to which Gobbler pointed out that we had no rope.  I was about to remind him that I was filthy rich in equipment when Paddy had a better idea.

"Tie it up with the other one."  The horror on Jimbo's face was priceless.

"With its dead mate?"

"Yup."  And thusly we traumatised the dungeon denizen to the point where its struggles ceased and offered no resistance as we returned to the kingdom.

To get reliable information, we needed a Zone of Truth spell, which was not on my list at the time. Deciding that our POW would likely find some way to commit suicide in order to end its horror, we knew that waiting for daybreak was a bad idea. I searched my kingdom for another level three cleric but, according to Jimbo, there were none to be found. Fine; the city above us would house one. It was Waterdeep, after all.

Returning to the City of Splendors sans the Iron Giant but with Brainburn (whose loyalty had actually been earned by that point) netted us even more cash from the then blubbering guards of the entrance. One of the two did not have enough to cover his loss and was threatened with an old fashioned Dwarven kneecapping. He had the cash ready for our return trip.

We sought out a priest of the Dwarven faith. Faced with the percentage of Dwarves in Waterdeep, Jimbo ruled that there was one, a Cleric of Morrodin. I tithed a great deal and tried to pry my fellow Cleric away from Waterdeep and into my kingdom. After a successful diplomacy check and some heavy roleplaying, he agreed.

Once back in the kingdom (which we never did name), we led our newest subject to the cathedral. There, we had the traumatised Choker under suicide watch. After gathering what supplies the priest needed, we sat back and waited for the magic. Spell in place, the questioning began.

It was slow going, but when Gobbler zombified her deceased mate and made him dance an Irish jig, all while still holding onto the poor woman, she snapped and told us everything. Not far from their cave was a deep well with a secret inside of it. Beyond that, she knew little. Her information was hardly worth all the effort but we were all incredibly proud of ourselves all the same. When asked for a quick release from death, we declined. Who knew what other 'valuable' information she may have.

I wold like to blame Brainburn's influence for our characters' less-than-wholesome actions, but that would be dishonest.

We set off again after a few days rest in search for the vaunted well. We got there and I could hear the Choker chuckling in the back of my head. We couldn't see the bottom of the well because there were webs obscuring the view. The whole thing, covered in webs. Before superskull could melt the webs away with his heat vision, a fiendish spider crawled out of the well.

The evil arachnid proved little test for us, as we dispatched it in a round. Before we could celebrate, however, another one came at us. This repeated itself for several turns before we realised that something else was amiss. Braving the webs, I leapt into the well. I took a low outcome from 3d6 falling damaged and landed next to a squishy thing. It shat a spider in response.

“An ooze” I shouted, getting Paddy to run down the walls and Brainburn to float down to aid me. Gobbler stayed fairly useless. A decent fight took place, what with the acid damage slam attacks that our massless enemy employed and the spider-per-round special ability that provoked no attacks of opportunity.

“Everybody out,” Jimbo via Brainburn shouted out to us. Paddy carried me back to the top via his run on walls ability and a second once-daily Fireball came blooming out behind us like a mushroom cloud. Sadly, this did next to nothing due to the spiders having the fiendish trait and the ooze being completely immune to fire damage.

Eventually we killed all the spiders and no more came out. I healed the party and back down into the well we went to go mano-a-mano against the summoning ooze. A few near death experiences later and we crawled triumphantly out of the well with our treasure, a few +1 arrows and a feather token for a swan boat. We had learned nothing from our previous experience with information obtained via torture. That Choker would pay.

On our way back we decided to investigate a rumbling noise that we retroactively had been hearing for the majority of the campaign. We found ourselves looking up into an ongoing stairwell. Moving up into it against my protestations, my fears were proven valid when the walls came down around us. All of us reflexed out and only took half of 3d6 damage as rubble blocked the way up. We stood at the base arguing over whose fault the entire debacle was when the traps magically reset itself and the rumbling began again. We could see up the stairwell again. Rationalising that treasure would be at the top (because if years of gaming has taught me anything, its that the most dangerous traps lead to the best treasure) we charged up the stairs. We narrowly made it up safely, beating the magically crumbling staircase by a hair's breadth.

We quickly found ourselves trapped between a landslide and two flaming spheres. Where they came from and why we couldn't see their glow before rushing up is beyond me. Oddly enough, as Brainburn's eye lasers quickly proved, the orbs of fire were not immune to fire damage. Thinking it was another case of Jimbo misreading things. He forked over the book long enough to show us that they did, indeed, take fire damage.

Flabbergasted, we quickly made short work of the orbs, thanks mostly to Brainburn. The path clear, we moved up to the 'top' of the stairwell. A glowing wall of arcane energy blocked our path. Recognising it as part of the dream that unified the original characters, of whom half were then dead, I stuck my hand into it. After detecting evil, of course.

Finding none, I reached in and pulled out a ring. The ring, which had tiny horns on it, would allow its wielder to employ Greater Teleport at will. If I have to explain to you how bad an idea it is to gift this to a level 3 party, you probably shouldn't be reading this (but please keep doing it; any ego stroking is welcome!). Given a power greater than I could really comprehend, and being in great need of health after dealing with two cave ins atop us and two flaming spheres, I took us back to the kingdom for some much needed R&R.