This week has left me feeling ... fragile.
We rejoiced at being able to get back to our home AD&D game after the pile of deadlines. And then this...?! Sheesh. It's been two days, and I think I can finally talk about it now:
Active Cast:
Me: Roska, lvl 11 half-orc fighter
Toni: Nimue, lvl 12(?) elven ranger (polymorphed to look like a drow a year+ ago)
Neil: Bactine, lvl 14(?) gnome cleric
Roska tried to save her longtime friend, Nimue, who was fighting an invisible (to the rest of us) foe. After seeing a cleric get thrown back by some force, Roska asked Nimue if she needed help. She said yes, so Roska ran in, knowing something bad might happen, but - Nimue FRIEND! Roska tried to use Wave -- yes, THAT Wave -- to shield her. All of a sudden Wave EXPLODES and a mirror image of the drow (which only she & Nimue can see) is charging in to attack her.
Didn't expect THAT kind of bad. :(
The shock of Wave's destruction was definitely felt around the table, to a person. The Cube of Friendship shall be missed...especially by the squishy magic-users.
{At that point, I may have been heard to say something glib like, "I'd rather Roska had died, than lose Wave."}
The faux-drow kept pursuing Roska even after Nimue's body hit the ground. What kind of screwed-up betrayal is this?? The little half-orc brain couldn't process it. She ended up relenting to the mirror image of Blackrazor.
Oh, yeah, did I mention our friend was wielding Blackrazor?
Throughout all this, I don't know if having Toni at the table in person vs. via Skype would've made things better or not. If she'd been here, there probably would've been real tears and Bob would've felt even worse. It was definitely tense. (I still love you, Toni! I promise!!)
Luckily it was just a mirror image of Blackrazor, so Roska's soul wasn't irrevocably gone. In the clusterf*** we also lost our highest-level cleric in the party. Roska was brought back via "poor man's resurrection" (raise dead + animate dead) by the 9th-level cleric at the scene; Nimue was left with 1/2 her XP and NOTHING but the sword - but looks like HER again; Bactine was irrecoverable. It's gonna take quite a bit of equipment-juggling to get through the rest of the Demonweb Pits at this point, especially without Bactine and the 2 absent clerics. GRR. NO MORE ALIGNMENT SHIFTS, 'KAY PEOPLE??
....
And that's how my week went. *sigh* Starting to remember why funnels are better: no time to get attached to characters or crucial items...
