Return to Blackhawk + Dungeons & Dragons

A real treasure. 

We started off Monday night (game night) with a trip down the road to help herd a couple of rogue cows out of a back garden and back into the paddock. Lewis was away, so I wasn't expecting a call for help from the Morgans. Anyway, the Tamahere Officers Club came to the rescue!

I was back in the DM seat this week, after a couple of sessions as a player (with Lewis running Dungeon Crawl Classics). It was a slow start but our group of Cowherders were in a good mood and there was an enthusiastic rummage through the character sheet pile to find the surviving members of the D&D Blackhawk campaign.

Dave and Blair's characters leapt at the opportunity to leave Lolth's lair via a mysterious shimmering golden door. Thus they were transported back in the surrounding area of Shallow Water. Or to be more precise, brought to a ledge halfway up the mountain, beneath the ruined city of Blackhawk. A glorious sunset greeted them. In the distance a pair of dragons danced above the clouds, then decended towards the cliff face.

During the evening there were nostalgic moments. Greg had missed a few sessions, so there was some tying up of loose threads and sharing details about the journey so far. Also apparent were the many different unresolved quests (for want of a better word). It's great that there are still some things left undone.

The aforementioned dragons brought the characters swiftly down the mountain, over the ramshackle town of Shallow Water and across the lake, to Sorcerers Isle. Although the druid decided to transform into a hawk and fly under his own power.

Upon landing there was a brief reunion with the magi and covenfolk (3 days of healing and identifying magic items). They then gathered together a small group and embarked upon a quick reconnaissance mission to determine the nature of the mysterious attackers that had continued to harass the Covenant in their absence. The players are not ones to rest on their laurels.

Greg and Blair also picked some new characters to play from the NPC roster, bolstering the party with a cleric and another magic-user. Grim Eustace and Nickleback, both 7th level characters, will no doubt make themselves useful during the campaign. Dave's dwarven cleric Helgon also made a comeback. Last seen disappearing into a crevasse on the back of a falling ettin, the dwarf was previously missing and presumed terminally flat.

Not mine but the cover speaks to me. 

The night ended in a cliff cavern after an encounter with frog men and a weird frog boy with a green dagger. The later mysteriously disappeared before the battle began. And what of the red frogs that sprang from the rune-carved cauldron, leaping through a crack in the wall?

So it really has been RPG month. Playing and DMing in a fine fellowship. What more could one ask for?