Pushed the game up a week, since Brendan is going to the They Might Be Giants concert next Tuesday.  So Frog-Barian Fight Take Two.  Now with clearer understanding of the modifiers for underwater combat.  And the froggos were dispatched, if not quickly, then ably by slumber hexes, lightning and much stabbing and slashing.  But not before they summoned their god, a giant, mutant devilfish.  Who might have eaten Sillius the Wizard, but dimension door is one of the spells that can be cast when grappled.  And thus was the all underwater encounter finished.

October:
Short Fiction:
New Reads:  Vivian Cathe's (ed) Humans Wanted

• Bruce Sterling's Schismatrix Plus
• C.B. Lee's Not Your Sidekick
• Charles E. Gannon's Fire With Fire
• Ken Liu's Wall of Storms
• A.J. Hartley's Firebrand

Rereads: Lois McMaster Bujold's A Civil Campaign, Captain Vorpatril's Alliance & Gentleman Jole & the Red Queen

• Terry Pratchett's Thief of Time

Graphic Novels/TPBs/RPGs: Simon Spurrier/Tun Huat/Michael Del Mundo's X-Men Legacy: Legion v.1: Prodigal

• Greg Rucka/Matthew Southworth/Lee Loughridge's Stumptown v.1

Total: 12


November:
Short Fiction: Julia Keller's the Tablet of Scapttar
New Reads: Gene Wolfe's Shadow of the Torturer

• T. Kingfisher's Clockwork Boys
• Mia Archer's Villains Don't Date Heroes
• Brandon Sanderson's Oathbringer
• Jay Styrvant's Perfect Stranges, Black Friday, Over Our Heads & Head Down
• Jim C. Hines' Terminal Alliance
• K.B. Spangler's Stoneskin
• Eric Flint/Paula Goodlett/Gorg Huff's 1637: the Volga Rules

Graphic Novels/TPBs/RPGs: Christina Strain/Amilcar Pinna/Alberto Alburquerque/Eric Oda's Generation X: Natural Selection v.1

• David Willis' Dumbing of Age: The Machinations of My Revenge Will Be Cold, Swift, and Absolutely Ridiculous: v.6
  
• Chris Claremont/Bob McLeod/Sal & John Buscema/Ron Frenz' the New Mutants: Epic Collection
• Brennan Lee Mulligan/Molly Ostertag's Strong Female Protaganist v.2

Total: 16

December:
Short Fiction:
New Reads: Robin D. Laws' Blood of the City

• Chuck Wendig's Aftermath: Empire's End
• Matt Ruff's Lovecraft Country
• Barbara Hambly's Dragonbane
• Seanan McGuire's Down Among the Sticks & Bones
• Paul Cornell's Long Day in Lychford
• Martin Scott's Thraxas
• R.J. Ross' Rainbow Rush

Rereads: Terry Pratchett's Going Postal

Graphic Novels/TPBs/RPGs: Jason Keeley/Owen K.C. Stephens/James L Sutter (dev team) Starfinder: Alien Archive

• Chris Hastings/Gurihiru's the Unbelievable Gwen-poole: Beyond the 4th Wall: v.4
• G. Willow Wilson/Andrian Alphona/Takeshi Miyazawa's Ms. Marvel: Mecca: v.8
• Ben Aaronovitch/Andrew Catmel/Lee Sullivan's Rivers of London: Night Witch

Total: 13

This week we fought a bloat wizard and some devils. The spiked ones who got away from us in the armory lo these many weeks ago.  But that poor evil wizard did not have things go its way. Bill's cleric and the summoned paladin reflected his big mass damage spell back on him and then our witch turned him to stone. And then Matt tried to dump the turned to stone bloat wizard into a summoned hungry pit.  To finish him off, from his mindless, statue, essentially DEAD state.  Like 20% of the time Matt's "creativity" can be pure genius.  And 50% of the time its just background sillyness.  And then 30% of the time you want to have someone sit on his character and make them not do anything.

Anyway this led to Matt wandering off invisibly, accompianied by all the pirate swears for almost costing us major NPC loot and important story moving forward clues.  Where he got attacked, by the arch-devil, nearly killed and 'ported away by his contingency spell.  Then we had to break before the fight with the arch devil since Frazer had to get home and relieve the babysitter.

Not a deal accomplished this session.  A late start, down a player and a rain delay causing the group to have to move the gaming table better cover.  Mostly we fought another group of Grey Maiden guards and stumbled into a major encounter in the palace throne room.  So next time the Evil Queen.  Or is it?

First we let our blind wizard wander around, then we fought some evil lady soldiers (who mostly got torn apart by the cleric's dog), looted the room of the absent Bloat Wizard (getting all his spell books) and finally we finished the night with a fight against a band of evil lady devils (who got beat down by magics holy or wall-themed).

With the delivery of various documents, infernal contracts and such to the Korvosan rebel leadership the streets were once again safe.  Well safe enough for our party to buy and sell plundered goods without too much risk of the Queen's killers.  But since the city only had limited total cash reserves, most of our looted magical swag was exchanged for an airship.  Brendan still wouldn't let me add cannons.  After that was research into the best customs and celebrations to use for my upcoming wedding to Jeanie the Efreetess.  Efreetina?  Efreetah?

And with shopping and other bookkeeping accomplished we headed back to the castle to root out any remaining lieutenants.  I mean we got sort of ambushed by a patrol of Grey Maidens along the way, but the mostly fell to Sillius' glyph of stunning.  Then it was onto to the secret armory entrance and a trio of barbed devil brothers.  Who ended up fleeing after only a couple rounds after one of them was pretty quickly dispatched by Krogar and the party made their saves against their best attack.  Still a victory is a victory.

Started the evening with Matt's wizard Sillius getting his draws from the Harrow deck of many things.  Not surprisingly (and with zero Harrow points of his own remaining) Matt went with the maximum four draws.  For which he got his own ants, his own paladin summoning sword, a level, the speed increase and three extra draws.  Leading to him being permanently blind, losing a level at night and the opportunity to trade his own life potential for magic items from a other-dimensional merchant.  So he aged himself two age categories  and got a headband to compensate for being blind and a belt to compensate for the stat loss of being older.

After that we began to explore the 4th level of the castle.  Well after Bill's cleric Terry healed the blindness of me and the witch.  Then to the exploring.  Led by Sillius in gaseous form using his limited range thoughtsense.  This led to a battle with a horned devil and a group of Red Mantis Assassins.  The devil dealt out some heavy damage early with a fireball and lightning bolt, receiving some return fire from Eric's Thrumm's holy arrows.  Only to then go down with a single critical hit from Frazier's Krogar.  After that the RMAs were just mopping up.

We shuffled the schedule around since Frazer can't game next week.  So this week saw the group teleporting down to the dungeon level.  Where Matt experimented with scouting using the spell Vomit Twin.  Where the wizard vomit's up a kind of slime duplicate.  Only Matt would build a 15th level Wizard with a spell book with obscure Goblin spells.  But this led us to a trapped room that summoned some kind of evil other-planar Star Children beasties.  That blinded me and Ona the Witch and delivered some punishing Shining Ray attacks.  Bill's Terry the Cleric did manage to cover the group in communal protection from evil so at least they couldn't physically attack.

Eventually (and mostly thanks to Krogar and Thrumm) the Star Children were defeated and we learned that the entire room was basically pointless, though rewarding in the XP sense.  Next time hopefully we can find dem bones.  Which is hopefully a fetch quest that results in a safe resting point in the the castle.

Went on the roommate's extra guest membership again this year, the I only managed one of the days.  On Sunday I was just exhausted and fell back asleep in the morning.  A small pity, as I'd signed up for a session of Kobolds Ate My Baby! and to try out the board game Abyss.  But Saturday was good.  Played in the GURPS: Trollhunters ongoing again.  This time I was chipper, fanatical priestess of the God of Resurections.  I kind of picture her in a Mormon suit, biking around from dungeon to dungeon, knocking on doors.  Anyway, our group went to the ruins and encountered a band of orcs, led by a troll.  A sizable portion of the orcs were downed by the groups specialized archer, until she got knocked out by a more heavily armored orc.  In preparing for the approaching troll I attempted to boost the health of the dwarf barbarian only to suffer a critical miscast.  Which turned them into a giant naked dwarf.  They gamely tried to wrestle the troll but ended up at -66 hit points.  Still alive and walking at the end of the battle, but yeesh.  Despite several near deaths (including my priestess) the group was victorious and the characters will advance to whoever runs them next.

Later in the evening I got to play the Red Dragon Inn card game.  In that the players are adventurers relaxing at a tavern, spending their loot on booze.  Each player has an adventurer deck, i was Zot the Wizard.  Another player picked Pooky the Bunny, my familiar.  The goal is to force the other players out, either by making them pass out from a combination of damage and drunkeness or by losing all your money.  I managed to help push out the enchantress, the drunken monk, the time wizard, the fighter AND my familiar.  But the shaman managed to block several turns of my attacks on him while right on the edge and come from behind to win.

We start with the duel against Triffaccir about to begin and the return of Matt's wizard and Eric's arcane archer.  After a few rounds with the rest of the group observiving Bill's cleric spots that Triffy isn't what he appears.  This leads to Sillius the wizard wandering over under an anti-magic shell.  Which is aggravating in that it suprresses all MY magic items and buffs, but does reveal that Triffy is a disguised efreet.  This quickly turns the duel into a mass combat with the efreet taking flight and unleashing mutliple scorching rays.  Eventually the evil genie is defeated by a mulitude of enchanted arrow strikes from Thrumm the A.A, spells from Terry the cleric and the witch and flying attacks by Terry's celestial dog mount and Krogar the Pig (given flight by me).  Sillius, the high level wizard, mostly tried to get the efreet to look at him and his symbol of stunning.  Of course getting hit by a half-dozen rays did mean Terry died before the end of the fight.  Of course at our level thats a pretty short term effect.

So the first of our Defeat the Queen goals was accomplished and I got some new blood to drink so I could learn scorching ray.