With the introduction of the monk and the rogue to our HeroQuest table, I think we can say that we’ve moved out of the “starter box” phase of our HQ journey, and are well into the “how much more money can I sink into this game” phase.
I mean, there’s this “The Mage in the Mirror” expansion that powers up the elf with epic gear and spells, the dwarf is set up for tanking, and… well, I guess we’ll get into that.
Header image shows the monk facing off against the evil wizard at the heart of the dungeon. Dall-E 3 contributed the art, the actual picture is below.
Here’s the scenario:
The Orcs of the Black Mountains have been using fire magic in their raids. Balur, the Fire Mage, is thought to be responsible for helping them. No fire magic can harm Balur and the Emperor’s wizards are unable to counter his spells. You have therefore been chosen to enter his lair, deep beneath Black Fire Crag. The Emperor will reward each Hero with 100 gold coins for Balur’s destruction.
So, setting the stage: Dwarf, with the epic armor from the last adventure, has five defense dice. His short sword gives him two attack dice, but the crossbow three, so he tries to take a step back to use the crossbow when possible.
Elf returns as well. We haven’t been swapping the spells, so Elf sticks with the same water spells she has been using right along. She also has a short sword and a crossbow.
Ally swaps out her barbarian for the monk. The barbie tosses his crossbow to the monk as they pass in the guild hall, along with all of his gold. I’d linked my previous article on how I saw the monk being played to her, and she’d read it.
Not so much my son, who took the rogue without knowing how to play it. I spent a couple minutes bringing him up to speed. Since he was previously playing the wizard, there wasn’t much gear they could swap.
Kasul was playing Zargon, as usual. He really loves it 🙂 I played the dwarf and elf.
So we head outside, reintroduce some skeletons to their afterlife, go down a corridor, open up a door, and there’s the boss of the dungeon — Balur, the Fire Mage.
He looks a little surprised. He summons some orcs and as we begin dealing with them, he vanishes. I did some poking around afterward; it turns out he can be killed at this point, and if killed, he’s gone, adventure done. You can finish this quest in five minutes. You wouldn’t get the loot, but technically you would be done.
It was not to be, though. We fought our way through the dungeon and came to a dead end. Somewhere we’d missed a secret door to head deeper into the dungeon. We didn’t have to backtrack too far, though, and soon we came to the room in the center of the dungeon. The monk opened the door, and there was Balur, surrounded by skeletons, his book of dread spells open before him, already chanting.
He sent a fusillade of spells down on the monk as the skeletons and zombies sat down for dinner. The monk was helpless. The rest of us rushed in. The monk was soon free of his fear, and used his fire ki to take down some of the undead. It was the dwarf who got in the last blow — with the crossbow, of course.
The quest was technically over, but there was no treasure in the room. We had to go looking a little further for that, finding a Wand of Magic that allows a hero to cast two spells in a round instead of one. This is obviously wizard loot, but without a wizard, it fell to the elf to take.
With the spoils, the elf and dwarf pooled their gold and got the dwarf a greataxe. Now he won’t always have to be backing up to use the crossbow — and now he finally is equipped like his mini. Drew bought a short sword for the rogue. Monk didn’t find anything they wanted — quite yet.
This was the eighth mission — six more to go to finish up the basic quest book.
