Midjourney — the text-to-image program I used for this post’s title image — has released a tool to tune Midjourney to an almost ridiculous extent, and once tuned, to keep using this tuning for other images. This is WAY beyond Dall-E 2. I’m betting Dall-E 3 will raise the bar again, but I’m happy.
So back to our wayward wizard. The wizard is played by a guy, my son, who plays a lot of D&D in real life with a couple different groups. You would think that he would know the value of everyone sticking together and letting the big meat shields stand in the front. He didn’t, and he did pay the price.
Zargon spake thus: “Sir Ragnar, one of the Emperor’s most powerful knights, has been captured. There is reason to believe that he is being held prisoner by Ulag, the Orc Warlord. You are to find Sir Ragnar and bring him back to the stairway. Prince Magnus will pay 240 gold coins to be divided among the Heroes, if they rescue Sir Ragnar. No reward will be paid if Sir Ragnar is killed during the escape.”
The clear strategy here is for one player to rescue the imprisoned knight, and escape with him while letting the rest of the party die, in order to get all that sweet, sweet gold for themselves. I kid.
Upon leaving the starting room (which we searched thoroughly, as we knew that this map would introduce both secret doors and hidden traps), we were immediately set upon by a half dozen goblins who, hearing us enter, were hot for blood.
Their puny defense, though, made them short work for our crew. We confidently went further into the dungeon.
Carefully exploring, we nonetheless triggered a few traps, got surrounded by a few orcish hordes. You know, the stuff that happens. Our devotion to searching for treasure and defeating the monsters that sometimes wandered in left us with a fair few gems, bags of gold and potions of various sorts. Things were going well. Subtle little high fives were exchanged. Talk turned to how we would spend all of this amazing gold.
That all changed when the wizard rushed ahead to open a closed door and found Sir Ragnar, starved, barely able to move, but knowing that he had to escape no matter the cost. Attaching himself to the wizard who rescued him, he demanded to be brought out of the dungeon, immediately.
Okay, but… there was a siren wailing throughout the dungeon. A huge crashing noise as all the doors in the dungeon opened all at once followed. And then, the battle cries of a dozen blooded orc and goblin warriors led by a terrifying abomination, came straight for us.
We ran for it, but we couldn’t run as fast as we liked, not with Ragnar stumbling along behind us. If Ragnar died — no reward. We went at a snail’s pace, and were soon faced with an army of snarling demihumans, all intent on sucking the marrow from our succulent bones.
We were careful. We supported each other. The wizard spent his spells without care. The elf did the same with hers. If Ragnar died while we had any spells left, then somewhere we would have made a poor choice. We didn’t fail. We came close, but, we survived. We sent Ragnar on his way, and then we started on the serious business of the night: looting all the treasure.
Without any enemies left in the dungeon, we stopped worrying about anything but rolling the movement dice. The wizard, with his pass wall spell, got way in front of the group. He came to a chest. Zargon warned him that chests might be trapped. Heedless of the danger, the wizard opened the chest and… it was trapped. The wizard slumped to the ground.
Some say that the elf egged him on. I think that slanders the elf. But then, she was new to the job. Elf 1.0 was a casualty of The Trial, the previous quest. Elf 2.0 was a clean slate. She also kindly looted the chest that had killed the wizard, and looted the wizard as well, because in the elven lands, leaving loot behind is a crime of the highest order.
The loot collected, the barbarian, dwarf and elf followed Ragnar out of the dungeon.
Did we have enough money to visit the armory? We did! And now, the next time we delve into dungeons… maybe we won’t have to live quite so much on the end.
