HeroQuest: The Stone Hunter

While the rest of the crew has been enjoying their crossbows and their spells, the dwarf has just been making do with a short sword (that looks, somehow, like an axe). The barbarian can shoot at anything he sees for three combat dice. The dwarf has to get up close and personal to every single monster and poke it for only two combat dice. Its only the helmet he picked up a few quests back that let him have three defense dice — which is not nearly enough given all the danger he’s in.

Now that Kasul has more or less permanently taken the Zargon role, I’m left playing the elf and the dwarf, the characters he played. The elf… has spells and a crossbow. She’s only in danger when she wants to be in danger.

The Emperor’s personal wizard, Karlen, has disappeared. The Emperor fears he has been either murdered, or succumbed to the lures of Chaos magic. You are to find out what happened to Karlen and, if he is alive, bring him to safety. You will be paid 100 gold coins each upon returning.

Well, we have a wizard right here, we could kill the one we already have and return him for the reward? No? Zargon said no.

The last two quests have been just one trap after another, so we warily moved through the first few rooms of the dungeon. Mummies sprang up whenever we searched for treasure — four defense dice. It was hard to hit anything vital. Undead were everywhere; thankfully, most of what we encountered were the weaker skeletons. It all felt so unclean. I looked forward to meeting orcs again. At least they breathed and bled.

The barbarian took an incautious look past the end of a hallway and found two Chaos warriors — one on either side of him. Chaos warriors are like Dread warriors, but with five defense dice instead of four. We found a third one while fighting the first two; they were at the corners of the hallway running around the central room. We were careful not to aggro the fourth one we knew was there.

Very much battered and bloody, we took on the fourth Chaos warrior and explored further, stumbling on a massive stone gargoyle in the very next room. By this time both the characters I controlled, the dwarf and the elf, were very low on health. The elf was taking potshots with her crossbow, but the dwarf, with just one body point left and no ranged weapon, just tried his best to stay out of the way.

The elf used her healing magic to put the dwarf back in the game, and he opened a door to a room with a mummy and two skeletons… and an armor rack. He and the others set to work, and it was the dwarf who looted the +2 armor from the rack. Five defense dice. Things were looking up.

While the dwarf was admiring himself in his reflection off a skeleton’s shined-up skull, the barbarian was checking out the other door and finding… a zombie dressed in the tattered remains of wizard’s robes. The barbarian made short work of that, and the elf rushed in and searched the wizard’s desk to find evidence of the baleful enchantments that had led him to such an end.

On the way back out, we found the only traps in the dungeon surrounding a room with a trapped chest… and a pit trap that the dwarf, true to his nature, fell headfirst into. We looted more gold from the chest and left, a job well done, and we even brought back our own wizard alive and well.

With the gold the elf and the dwarf earned, I bought the dwarf a crossbow. With five defense dice and a three attack dice ranged weapon, the dwarf is back in the game.

I’m sure the other characters will have their moment in the sun. But last night — it was dwarf night.