Continued from part 1.

Having come out of the evil worship area, the party of explorers chose another corridor to follow out of the throne room. They made their way down a winding hallway, finally coming to a door at the end. The lead fighter knocked on the door, and then opened it, to find a woman warrior holding two swords standing in a dark room. The woman had apparently been through some trouble, as her clothing and gear were battle worn. The room itself was once an officer’s quarters, but the beds and furniture were old and battered. The party was a bit taken aback by this woman, standing alone in the dark, and they began questioning her, and she questioned them right back. Her story was that “we” had been betrayed and abandoned by “our” comrade, and they had to hide in this room from the goblins of the dungeon. The party wizard held up the big ruby they had found in the ash/fire snake pit, and got the woman’s interest. After a few more minutes of back and forth parley, the party realized she kept using a plural pronoun.

“Who is ‘we’?” the party inquired. At that question, two armed halflings came from around a corner and from behind a bed. Further talk revealed that these three had been exploring this dungeon with an elf comrade, but the elf had turned on them. The woman and halflings were wounded, so the party cleric aided them with some magical healing. The party offered to split treasure with the woman and halflings if they joined them, and the three agreed, saying they wanted to be eventually lead outside to safety.

So the party plus three then left that room and backtracked to the throne room. From the throne room, the party took another unexplored hallway. Making their way down this even longer and more winding passage, they went through a couple more doors, and finally came to another door at the very end of the hallway. This long uneventful trek had made everyone restless and rowdy again. And even more careless. The lead fighter flung the door open without caution.

A large red dragon stood immediately on the other side of that door, and it belched forth a spray of fire on the two lead fighters standing in the corridor. One fighter was only moderately singed, but the other was severely burned. The badly injured fighter hastily backpedaled from the doorway. While the cleric applied magical aid to the retreating fighter as all the other fighters charged forward to engage the dragon. The party overwhelmed the dragon in a hail of spear and sword thrusts. Only one more fighter was lightly injured before the dragon was defeated. Everyone gave a great cheer for their victory.

But once the dragon was out of the way, the party saw goblins in the chamber beyond, guarding a wizard preparing to cast magic spells.

The fighters charged into the room. The first two threw their spears over and between the goblin bodyguards, and the wizard was skewered without ever uttering a single syllable of any magic word. Then the party cut down the goblins without much trouble.

The room the dragon and wizard and goblins were in seemed to be just an empty chamber. No other doors, no furniture, no nothing but the now-dead inhabitants. The party said that just can’t be, so they went about searching the walls for secret doors. One fighter searched the wizard and found some coins and gems, and a couple of small bottles of liquid: one milky white, one clear like water. They recognized that they were probably magical potions, but what their magic might be, they didn’t know.

Those searching the room found and opened a secret door in the back wall. Beyond was another corridor, going just forty feet and ending. As they discussed searching this whole corridor, the fighter left guarding their backs, at the doorway where they had fought the dragon, called out that more trouble had found them.

Five hobgoblins were approaching from down the hallway, and the rear guard fighter charged into them. The rest of the party joined in a moment later. In a frenzy of stabbing spears and slashing swords, the hobgoblins were slain one by one. But the last standing enemy managed to swing his axe down hard on one of the fighters, mortally wounding him. The fighter fell to the floor moaning and bleeding. A couple of the other fighters stepped up and finished off that last hobgoblin, avenging their comrade, while the others in the party tried to help their fallen friend.

The wounded fighter would die momentarily if they didn’t do something immediately, and unfortunately, the cleric was all out of healing for the day. The fighter who had searched the dead enemy wizard pulled out the two potions he had found. Might one of them help? Maybe. But which one? They quickly decided to try the milky white potion, and poured it into the dying fighter’s mouth. It worked; it was a healing potion. The dying fighter’s bleeding stopped and the wound closed. The party rejoiced. They helped their recovering friend up, then they moved back through the room and into the secret passage.

Their search at the end of the secret passage found another secret door. They opened it and found a treasure room. Prominent in the room was a large, open chest full of gold and silver coins and jewels. To either side of the chest was a pile of gold and silver coins. Four of the fighters rushed toward the treasure only to learn that a magic sleeping spell protected it. Two of the fighters fell to the floor, asleep, but the two others managed to keep awake enough to stagger back away.

When it was confirmed that the fallen fighters were just sleeping, the rest of the party put their heads together to figure out what to do. To test the magical effect, a couple more fighters marched to the treasure. They both felt the affects of the sleep spell. One more fell asleep, and the other stumbled back away. So they realized that the effect was not a one-shot spell, but an ongoing enchantment.

The party made lassos of some lengths of rope, and pulled their sleeping companions out of the room, where they awakened easily enough. They then looped the treasure chest with the lassos and tried pulling the loot out. One fighter couldn’t even move the chest. Two could only barely make it shift. So all six fighters put their strength into pulling two ropes looped around the chest, and they managed to drag it all the way out of the room.

Trying to lasso the two piles of loose coins remaining in the room revealed that those piles were just illusions, not real. But the treasure in the heavy chest was real enough, and the party gathered it all up in their backpacks and sacks. Having reached the end of this area of the dungeon, the party, with a full load of treasure, decided it would be a good time to retreat out of the dungeon and retire in camp. The group made quick and quiet time back out the way they had come in.

And so ended the adventure. Tallying up the experience points for the monsters defeated and treasure found, the fighters all advance to 2nd level.

Bullgrit

Saturday, I introduced half a dozen boys, (five 10-year-olds, one 7-year-old), and a couple of dads to the adventure of Dungeons & Dragons. (The dads had played D&D 20+ years ago, but none of the boys had any experience with the game.) I was the Dungeon Master, and afterwards, I was completely exhausted, physically and mentally — in a good way. Everyone, boys and men, said they had a good time and that the game day was a great idea. The excited talk and big grins on every face after the game showed the sincerity of the thanks. Every boy came to me and asked if we would continue the game another weekend — a couple asking for next weekend — and both dads said they’d be happy to participate again if I did it.

We used the Basic D&D rules (1981, Moldvay edition), and the Players explored the dungeon of the module In Search of the Unknown. Here’s how everything went down:

Each of the six boys had a 1st-level fighter, one dad had a 3rd-level magic-user (wizard), and the other dad had a 3rd-level cleric. The premise of the adventure was that the wizard and cleric were wanting to explore the dungeon to find a lost magic stone, and they needed the fighters as bodyguards. The dungeon was an old, abandoned fortress built into and under a hill in the wilderness. The original owners were long gone, and what might be left in the place was unknown. Monsters, treasure, magic, traps? All to be expected.

The party arrived at the location with a caravan of wagons, (for supplies and fighter replacements if necessary), but the wagons, drovers, and extra guards were left out at a camp while the core team of adventurers went inside the dungeon. The core team bravely entered the old underground fortress via a ten-feet wide and high corridor carved into the stone hill.

Sixty feet into the hillside, they came to the entrance door of strong wood with metal bindings. The group had their marching order: a double column with four of the fighters up front, followed by the wizard and cleric pair, and the last two fighters as rear guard. The lead fighters opened the door to find the corridor continuing deeper into the hill.

The party went forward down the hall, in a cacophony of excitement, sending echoes of their movement and talking and laughter far ahead of them. Immediately after the front door, they passed a pair of alcoves to either side of the hallway. They moved on. When they found another set of alcoves about fifty feet further in, they decided to search them in detail. A couple of the fighters searched each alcove while the other couple stood guard. One pair of searchers found a secret door in the back of the right-side alcove. But they hadn’t figured out how to open the door yet when they received their first combat challenge.

The party’s loud talking and laughing had attracted the attention of a pair of patrolling hobgoblins, who charged right at the guarding pair of fighters. The struggle was quick and painless for the party, as the hobgoblins fell easily to spear thrusts and throws.

Shortly after that, the alcove searchers discovered how to open the secret door, and they found a crossroads of corridors beyond. The group moved, still loudly, through the secret door and into the crossroads where they debated which direction they should go. The boisterously loud discussion attracted more attention from nearby creatures, and a group of goblins charged into their torchlight from both the south and east corridors. The party had to defend on two fronts, but the small goblins were well dealt with. A couple of fighters and the cleric took some minor wounding, but no one was seriously injured in the battle.

The party decided to explore down the east corridor. They moved down the hall, still loud and incautious. They came to a pair of doors on either side of the hallway, (which itself continued on further east). The fighter at the head of the party banged on the right-side door for some unstated reason — not that any creature in the dungeon didn’t already know the loud group was approaching. When everyone in the group finally got quiet, he listened at the door, and heard movement and voices somewhere on the other side. When another fighter tried listening to the door on the left side of the corridor, the party got noisy again with excitement over what grand battle might await them behind the first, right-side door. The lead fighter opened the door and the group charged through it.

The moderately large chamber they charged into was a throne room with tall columns reaching up to the ceiling twenty feet overhead. Half a dozen hobgoblins were staged about the area in a defensive stance, ready for attack. No leaders sat upon the thrones at the far end of the room. The party continued their charge and spread out to each take on a hobgoblin opponent. After a couple rounds of battle, and a few hobgoblin deaths, (with no adventurer death), a group goblins sprang out from behind the thrones to join the battle. The goblin surprise didn’t help the defense, and soon all goblinoid creatures were slain — even those mortally wounded goblins who had dropped their weapons and were trying to crawl away. A few of the fighters and the wizard were moderately wounded, but the cleric managed to heal everyone to at least near full health. (The cleric had a magic item that he could use to cure light wounds once per day for each person.)

After the battle, the party went about giving the throne room a cursory scan. There were three new corridors and a door leading from this room, and the group began another loud debate about what to do next. Then the wizard thought to cast detect magic. The yet unopened door began to glow, revealing a magic spell on it, and from the seat of one of the thrones, a small glow peaked out revealing something magical hidden under the seat.

Two fighters tested the door, and when it wouldn’t open, they set about smashing at it with shield and spear and sword. Another pair of fighters began searching the throne. They determined there was a secret compartment under the seat, and they also set about destructing their way into it. The door-workers made no way, but the throne-abusers managed to break the seat, and found the bottom filled with a jeweled crown, a pile of gold, and a glowing magical ring. One fighter grabbed the crown and gold while the other took up the magic ring.

Several ideas were suggested for using the ring to open the door, and eventually they had the fighter put on the ring and simply open the door. That worked. The group then lined up to move through the magical door into the next room.

The room was a worship area, with religious symbols covering the side walls, a large stone demon face on the far wall, a five-foot wide pit in the center of the floor, and four armored and armed skeletons standing at attention. The fighters continued into the room, stopping only when the armored skeletons animated and attacked. One of the fighters was badly injured pretty quickly, and he had to pull back from the front line. Another fighter took his place, and the cleric healed him. The other fighters handily defeated the undead.

The party began searching the room closely, taking time and attention to examine everything. The pit in the center of the room was three feet deep, blacked by fire and soot, with a pile of ash at the bottom. The demon face was carved directly from the stone wall, with a small concealed area down inside its mouth.

The group discussed methods of testing the room, and one fighter dropped a lit torch down into the ash at the bottom of the pit. Quickly, the ash started glowing and relit. In a puff of flame and smoke, a giant burning snake rose from the pit. The excitement was short-lived as one-two-three, the fighters around the pit destroyed the firey creature in seconds. After the fight, a fighter hopped down into the pit of ash and searched around. The dirty work turned out worthwhile, as he found a very large ruby concealed under the ash.

Then the group put their attention to the stone demon face. One fighter used a dagger to feel around in the demon’s mouth, and felt his blade bump and moved something within it. Another fighter incautiously put his hand into the mouth to feel around, and he snagged his hand on a sharp needle. A sharp needle coated with poison. Fortunately he resisted the poison’s effects. He then reached back into the mouth, again, but avoided getting stuck by the needle, and he pulled out a leather tube pouch. Opening the tube, he found three sheets of parchment with religious prayers written on them. The party cleric looked the papers over and found them to be magic spells: remove poison, continual light, and detect magic.

When the group was satisfied that there was nothing else to discover in the worship room*, they left to take a new corridor out of the throne room. The cleric used one of the just found magic scrolls to cast continual light on the spear tip of the lead fighter. This was useful, as having enough torch light for the party had gotten complicated.

Continued here.

* Note: The boys tried a lot of other activities and searches and ideas in this room, (and in other areas), that I’m not relating. The whole game session was four hours long, and I’m assuming you don’t want to take four hours to read the story in exacting detail, so I’m only writing about the activities and searches and ideas that actually accomplished something.

Bullgrit

Today is my birthday. Number 44. Forty-four magnum, I’m calling it. Like Harry Callahan’s hand cannon. “Do you feel lucky?” I do.

For this double-quad birthday post, I’d like to revisit my fitness efforts one more time. The last time I mentioned my exercise regimen was back in November last year,  when I showed my “final” results after the P90X and Insanity programs. Well, I’ve kept up my exercises, but I’ve dropped to working out just three times a week instead of the hardcore six times a week. I’m just in a maintenance mode, now. I’m happy with my fitness level and my physical appearance, so I just want to stay like this. I don’t need to buff up like a bodybuilder.

Forgive an old man showing his bare physique one more [last] time.

[And forgive the terrible lighting in these pics. Sheesh. Opening the blinds of the big front window just caused harsh shadows. Using the flash just washed out on my pale skin — too embarrassing to use for this post. I thought I could improve on the bathroom shots. I failed.]

Anyway. Something I’ve never mentioned before is that I have a pretty severe case of arthritis. My spine, let my show you it:

This image is my lumbar spine, seen from my left side. Note the solid black cartilage space between the bottom vertebrae. That’s well-developed arthritis. That’s what pain looks like.

This MRI image was taken back in August 2007, almost four years ago. I posted about the experience, but I never came out and said what it was all about. I’ve never talked about having arthritis, here, because I didn’t want you readers thinking of me as some decrepit invalid. I’m only comfortable mentioning it in this blog, now, because I can post the fit pictures with it.

Four years ago, I went from a general doctor to a specialist to find out why I was so regularly having back pain. I always got out of bed achy and groaning in the mornings. I often, (at least once a year), “threw out my back” when doing heavy work.

X-rays and MRI photos showed the answer: pretty well developed arthritis. I was rather stunned. I mean, I was just turned 40 years old. Arthritis is something senior citizens have. The doctor told me that the disease had been developing in me for a while.

“But doc,” I said, “I was doing martial arts several days a week, just a few years ago. I earned a black belt in Tae Kwon Do.”

“You were fit and strong from the martial arts,” the doctor explained, “and that keeps the pain away.”

Core strength and flexibility, like I had while doing TKD, is the best — really the only — way to overcome arthritis without drugs or surgery. In the years after last doing any good and regular exercise, the arthritis caught up with me. That’s why I was starting to feel the disease as pain.

The doctor explained that there is no way to fix, cure, or repair arthritis, but I could keep it from getting worse by getting back into good and regular exercise. But I had to be careful and mindful of how to do exercise properly; I had to protect my back because with arthritis, it’s easier to injure, and any injury is more painful.

I may have be having pains getting out of bed then, but worst case scenario if I didn’t get back into good and regular exercise would be that one day I wouldn’t be able to get out of bed at all. Knowing how bad my back hurt sometimes getting out of bed then, I understood what that meant.

So I got back into good and regular exercise. Well, sometimes and sort of. I was on again and off again with the exercise. At my worst, I was never really “fat.” I was overweight, yes, but I’m also 40+ years old with a sedentary occupation. I and everyone with whom I ever conversed about body weight considered me average and normal for a 40-something family man. My middle was getting thicker, but my belly never plumped over my belt.

As for my arthritis, very few people knew I had it. I ran and jumped and played with my kids like all the other dads around — more than some dads because I wasn’t fat and completely out of shape like some men my age. Only when getting out of bed in the mornings, or maybe getting up off a sofa or chair after an hour or more sitting around, did I make any groans of discomfort. My inconsistent efforts at exercise at least kept me out of severe pain from normal activity. I only took any kind of drug for the pain, (usually just ibuprofen, but rarely something stronger), when it was particularly bad.

Every once in a while — once or twice a year, about — I’d do something to “throw my back out.” I’d pick something up wrong, twist or jump bad, or just sit too long in an uncomfortable position. It was Arthur Ritus letting me know he was truly moved in for the rest of my life.

When I started thinking about picking up the P90X workout, I honestly didn’t even think about needing it for arthritis control. But I was reminded by a person who loves me that I need to remember my back problem and not do something careless to hurt myself. Starting a regular exercise regimen is a good idea, but going extreme and permanently injuring myself would be just plain dumb. Good advice.

I completed the three-month P90X regimen with not a single back problem. I continued the P90X for another couple of months, and then completed the two month Insanity program, and still had no problems with my back. My core strength and flexibility was better than ever. I’ve been in close to peak physical fitness for a 40-plus year old for a year, now. And I’m still going strong.

Only once did I hurt myself during any of these workouts. Fortunately, (and maybe ironically), it happened during this maintenance period I’m keeping up, now, (not during the first/main rounds of the programs). I got a little cocky and rambunctious during a power jump routine, and lost the proper form and control. I woke up the next morning in back pain. I had to take four weeks off from working out to recover. Frustrating, that was. But after the healing time, I got right back into my exercise routine, and I make sure I keep the proper form and control when doing my extreme maneuvers.

* * *

So, I’m 44 years old today. Forty-four magnum.

Booyah! :-)

And my birthday party, next weekend, will be a wonderful nerd-fest.

Bullgrit

You know how researching something on the Internet leads to something else which leads to something completely unrelated. This pattern eventually lead me to Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

I remember first hearing this song in 1991 when one of my gaming buddies showed up for our game night with a small boombox. He had the Nirvana CD playing Teen Spirit. I remember that the song had a pretty infectious rhythm, which I can still easily conjure up in my head years after having last heard it. But the lyrics were . . . what? I could make out, “Here we are now, entertain us,” but the rest of the words were completely unintelligible.

Not that songs must have completely clear lyrics, but . . .

I understand this song, and this band, especially Kurt Cobain, became a cultural phenomenon in its time. I remember asking my game buddy that night, “What’s that song about?” His answer, “Teen Spirit is a girl’s scent spray.”

Yeah, I was aware of the Teen Spirit spray thing from the common commercials of the time. But then, and even years later, I never heard anyone give a definitive answer for what that song is about. I would think that for a song to be declared masterful, a phenomenon, fans should at least have a hint as to what it’s about.

Now, I was 24 years old at the time this song was a big hit. So maybe my lack of appreciation for it has more to do with my being beyond the teenage and college demographic than with the song itself being intellectually void.

But then in 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked “Smells Like Teen Spirit” number 9 in its 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Huh? How does this break the top ten? This song gets top ten status, but “Stairway to Heaven” ranks 31? Hell, how does Nirvana’s only top 20 hit (reached only #6) beat out anything by Led Zepplin? Or The Who? Or U2, or Johnny Cash, or Elvis Presley? Or even Boston, which got rank number 500 with “More Than a Feeling”? Come on — “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is 491 places better than “More Than a Feeling”? That’s ridiculous.

And then I remember seeing a VH1 show, 100 Most Shocking Moments in Rock ‘N’ Roll a few years ago. Kurt Cobain’s suicide was ranked the number 4 most shocking RnR moment? An angsty, drug-addled “genius” who couldn’t handle the couple years of fame that his weird song got him killing himself is considered more shocking than Marvin Gaye being murdered by his father, (number 5)? Or Elvis Presley dying, (number 21)?

Really, the people who figure up these top whatever lists have a weak sense of what is truly great and classic, and shocking.”Smells Like Teen Spirit” is mumbled drivel compared to many of the bigger hits even in its own year. And Nirvana/Kurt Cobain are sad one-almost-hit wonders compared to so many artists who have more hit songs than he had years of life.

I don’t hate Nirvana or their song, but it’s downright insulting for them and it to be elevated to a pedestal above so many more worthy names.

Bullgrit