Slain by Elf

'This character sheet is five pages long! Can I have a shorter one?'

'Nope, the halfling has already been picked.'

There is no doubt that those blue dragon eggs found in Coldarra, similar to the netherwing eggs, look stylistically cool, but can you imagine laying one?

Ouch.

It seems like we have been in this dingy room without making any progress for a month! Maybe my state of near-death affected my perception of time, but everything is becoming clear now. Before we move on we check the state of everyone's health. Adran is a little concerned, 'I've only got eight hit points left. And I've used six healing surges.'

'How many do you start with?'

'Eight.'

'So you're on full hit points? That should last at least one more fight.' After the confusion is cleared up with a glare that couldn't have been deserved we rest to regain hit points and healing surges ready for the next encounter.

Pushing deeper in to the Keep we manage to outwit some statues—somehow—and find ourselves confronted with a dozen zombies and a ghoulish creature that we might recognise as a ghoul if we knew what a ghoul was. Leaping in to action and defying typecast Adran acts first on initiative, moving from the back of the party in to melee combat for first strike.

Inspired by these heroics Iago, our warlock, follows quickly behind. Ready to blast some intense energy towards the zombies he uses a mighty encounter power. Sadly, both D20s he rolls land on a natural 1, casting his initially optimistic attitude in to a deep despair.

'I missed, missed! My soul itself is blackened from the disappointment and rebuke I must surely suffer at the hands of friends and foe alike.' With this he pulls out a small dagger from his tunic. 'I call upon my dark lord to witness my self-harm and grant me absolution!' The player announces that he has used another ability, this one letting him get back the failed encounter power at the cost of a few of his hit points.

'So the net result of your own action is that you took damage? You're really playing in to the whole 'emolock' character.'

Despite this initial set-back the zombies and hardier undead are fought valiantly. My own minion-destroying spells work their magic and Adrann continues his pursuit of bravery by pursuing a fleeing flying enemy and preventing it from exiting the chamber. The main problem comes from two undead that work together to cause all sorts of problems for our dwarven fighter. He becomes immobilised, dazed and stunned in quick succession.

It all works out in the end with a concentrated attack on the undead monsters and some crafty pushing and pulling. It is not long before the status effects are shaken off by the dwarf, at which point Kawakami quips that the dwarf's efforts have 'saved the daze'.

'I would quite like to see Frost/Nixon.'

'What's it about?'

'...the Frost/Nixon interviews.'

'Oh, like I couldn't have guessed that.'

'Apparently you couldn't.'

We have established identities as normal people living normal lives, a flimsy mask that barely covers our eyes, and more brute force and ignorance than we ever imagined could sit around the same table. It's time to be super heroes!

It is late December and people are gloomily going about their business with nothing to look forward to. After foiling a simple bank robbery that is all in a day's work we are contacted by a powerful mentor, who promptly teleports us to a snowy landscape. It is not long before we are told we need to save Christmas. This would be more dramatic if we knew what Christmas was, but apparently it will all come back to us once we get Father Christmas out of the clutches of some dastardly super villain.

Father Christmas is being held in his toy-making factory and all his assistants have fled to a cave in the snowy region in which we find ourselves. It is these little elves who try to explain Christmas to us and entreat us to rescue their boss, so we start to devise a plan. Never is it more evident that we don't know about Christmas when our martial arts expert says we should 'sneak in the back with a small commando force of elves'.

Despite the elves being quite jolly with the idea of battling hobgoblins whilst armed only with action man figures our final plan involves not thinking too hard about anything and a lot of improvisation. With some heroically charged action and a bit of surpisingly competent role-playing the villain was defeated and Father Christmas freed. Christmas was saved and everyone had a fabulous roast turkey dinner to celebrate.

After reaching 68th level and finally mining enough adamantite to raise my death knight's blacksmithing skill up to 350 I take Gnomesblight to Howling Fjord to train as a grand master blacksmith and to start adventuring in Northrend.

The quests given in Valgarde for Wyrmskull Village are fairly straightforward, including the follow-up quests that take me in to Nifflevar, despite only being 68th level. I quickly reach 69th level and am collecting enough cobalt to smith myself half a suit of cobalt armour, ready for when I hit 70th level, a level requirement of the armour itself. The patterns for the armour are learnt from blacksmithing skill 350 onwards from the trainer in Valgarde. I complete the hawk training quests and pretend to be a construct for a while for the Explorers' League Outpost in the east, pausing only to slaughter a bunch of turkeys for the Friend or Fowl achievement, and am subsequently guided to Westguard Keep.

From Westguard Keep I bomb pirates, collect cannonballs and keep the dragon population in Ember Clutch under control. Returning from rescuing pack mules and collecting gems and ore from Whisper Gulch brings an exciting moment when I hand in the quests to reach 70th level! I take a break from adventuring and step through a death gate back to Ebon Hold to learn my new skills and taking the opportunity to buy the death knight-specific flying mount. Of course, I don't know how to fly it yet but a quick trip to Wildhammer Stronghold will resolve that.

First, I have to borrow money from uncle Knifey. I feel kind of guilty to ask him for money but he is happy to give it to me. It seems that being in semi-retirement is working out well for him. With that little bit of extra pocket money I am able to learn how to ride flying mounts, gaining another achievement in the process, and I summon my Winged Steed of the Ebon Blade. Despite its skeletal wings and my heavy cobalt plate armour I am safely kept in the air.

It is perhaps a bit of a luxury to have a flying mount at 70th level these days, considering that I won't be able to use it in Northrend until I've learnt how to fly in cold weather, but as I still need to mine adamantite to help with Sapphire's jewelcrafting profession a flying mount becomes invaluable in Outlands. As the mount also increases its speed with my own riding skill it also isn't a waste of money should I ever earn enough to learn the expert flying skill.

With 70th level and a flying mount under my belt I finally feel like I am becoming fully involved in the Wrath of the Lich King.

Taking a break from hours of mining I take Gnomesblight, my Death Knight, to Blade's Edge Mountains for quests and excitement. I work my way through the quests given at Sylvanar and return later to head across the valley to find the gnomes of Toshley's Station. At Toshley's Station I am asked to test a device of the gnomes, which I happily agree to. Even subjecting myself to potentially dangerous levels of electricity seems like a better idea than mining more ore right now.

I get charged up and am shot in to the air, but thankfully coming back down to earth slowly. I float gently down and am glad that I pointed myself away from all the monsters in the area. Landing with a small bump I return to Toshley's Station and let them know the results, whereupon I am asked if I would like to test a more powerful version. Sure, why not? I need to wait a couple of minutes because I am still tingling with the built-up charge, so I head off to complete a task for another gnome first.

I am to open some nether drake eggs, which luckily doesn't affect my reputation with the nether drakes, and collect some essences of drakes in various states of evolution. If they are not in the correct evolutionary state I give them a blast with the Temporal Phase Modulator I am given and try again. The modulator works quite well for the most part but there was a little side-effect. When zapping one of the hatched drakes I don't get quite what I expect when Nihil the Banished, an elite boss, appears in front of me.

I am a little taken aback and stand stunned for a few seconds whilst Nihil the Banished thanks me for releasing him to perform all manner of evil deeds on an unsuspecting world. Just as I get myself composed and bring my weapon to bear on the dragon he flies off. If it isn't bad enough that I accidentally summon an elite dragon boss he scarpers before I get a chance to collect his essence for my quest, the ungrateful git. Undeterred, I continue cracking eggs and collect all my essences.

The static charge I had built-up has completely abated by now so I return to the gnomes. I hand in my signed waiver agreeing not to sue them should anything go wrong and step back on to the platform. I decide to point myself in a friendly direction again, thinking this is the easiest money I've made in a while, and wait for the charge to build up. As I blast in to the air I realise that my flying direction is rather more random, to the point where I am soaring over the valley that is Death's Door. It's quite a long way down to the ground of Death's Door so I am pleased to see that I'll just about clear the valley and land on the other side. It's a bit of a run back to Toshley's station, but better than falling to my doom.

As I get my bearings after landing I spy a giant who looks a bit out of place amongst the flying serpents. It is Morcrush, a rare elite mob. Even though he is elite and two levels above me I don't run in the opposite direction. I quite like a bit of a challenge and being a Death Knight has seen me crush most obstacles in my path so far. I clear a few serpents around the giant and switch in to frost presence, getting ready for a bit fight. With some runic power left over from the fights with the serpents and my health almost full I blast Morcrush with an icy touch.

Morcrush doesn't hit too hard, instead relying on smaller Morcrushes to do damage that break off when he is injured. I have my area-of-effect attacks to help me, though, including being able to spread my disease attacks to adjacent enemies. I mangle a few attacks, adrenalin pumping a little, and suck down a potion to rejuvenate me a little. It is not long before Morcrush is defeated and all his little minions soon afterwards! It was quite close but I still don't think I should have been able to defeat an elite mob two levels above me. I suppose I am pretty powerful outside of my own imagination after all.

Morcrush is only carrying some mail armour on him, which is a bit of a shame, but at least I am awarded the 'Medium Rare' achievement for killing a hard-to-find rare mob in the Outlands. It has been an interesting and fun time adventuring and a splendid break from mining for ore.

The mapping of the keep is turning out to be rather more dangerous than we would have liked. Traps, goblins and zombies have all turned up to hinder our progress and, on top of that, there is a gate to hell that is apparently being opened somewhere inside too. I didn't learn about any of this in cartography lessons. It is good, then, that my fellow adventurers and I all learnt more combative skills, even if it means our maps will be drawn with squiggly lines across several pages with only a corner of each page used.

When a pressure plate drops a metal gate in front of our path we cunningly defeat the obstacle by hefting the gate back in to the ceiling. Unfortunately, it turns out that the gate is not to keep people out, but to keep them in. No sooner have we entered the room ahead, with its enticing stacks of paper, than the gate falls again and hobgoblins rush towards us from the room's two doors. The leader grunts an order that no killing blows will be struck, we are to be taken alive. No such call comes from our side, however.

Despite our more brutal tactics the hobgoblins' numbers and surprise attack puts us at a distinct disadvantage and it is not long before our warlord falls to the floor unconscious. When he is awoken with some timely healing he stands only to be knocked down again. Desperate times call for desperate measures, so I cast sleep on the entire room. Some may say it is luck that causes almost all of the hobgoblins but none of my adventuring party to fall asleep and they would be right, but luck is what we needed.

With everyone slowed and most hobgoblins asleep the fight turns in our favour. The two hobgoblins still upright are turned in to mincemeat quite quickly, which leaves only those asleep to be dealt with. The Dwarf takes the opportunity to play his favourite sport: hobgoblin croquet. With a graceful swing of his mighty weapon Gruknal severs the head of one of the hobgoblins and sends it shooting across the floor where it hits and kills a minion. Apparently, this scores a point.

After the battle we enjoyed some mint tea and cream scones before rifling through the papers on the desk for information.

In Dungeons and Dragons, as it is with D20 games, a single combat round is six seconds long. Whilst it is accepted that it will generally take longer than six seconds to think of and describe the actions your character takes some sage advice was given around our table recently.

When the conversation shifts to talking about dice being regular polyhedra it means you're taking a bit too long to decide what to do in the round.

After battling an endless supply of skeletons jumping randomly out of the sarcophagi we explore beyond the crypt's far door. Another, more imposing sarcophagus greets our view as we pass in to the antechamber. A far more threatening skeleton climbs out of its resting place as it senses our presence. Luckily, we are able to convince it that we are not a direct threat, stopping it from attacking immediately. Perhaps it was our heroic presence, quick talking, or maybe the ranger's whimpering that helped.

Even so, the skeleton is still menacing and wants some proof that we are not here to promote the imminent opening of the gate to hell. In turn, it faces each of us and asks a question to gauge our true destiny. Ere long he turns to Iago and asks, 'What god do you serve and can I trust you to fulfil his destiny?'

'Yes, you can,' Iago responds firmly and with assured confidence. 'I worship... Owen? Um, Ioun maybe. It's the god of knowledge, I don't know how to pronounce the name though.' It's a stirring and convincing speech, clearly showing Iago to be dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. What option does the skeleton have but to let us continue our heroic efforts.