As Day 21 is the end of a week, another kind of magic permeates the Realm today. This time, purple magic is available to spell casters. That magical power is, of course, useless to the Black Knight, but it can be handy for folks like the Sorcerer, Magician and Wizard.
The Black Knight ended day 20 unhidden, so the brown side of his character token is face-up at the start of day 21. We will record our free hide, followed by four search actions, so we can begin looting the Dragon's Lair.
We roll for prowling monsters and obtain a 1: Dragons. That is bad. I had hoped we'd have at least a couple of days to loot the Lair unmolested, but the Tremendous Dragon will appear at the end of today.
We attempt to hide, rolling a pair of threes. Our hide is successful. That's good, at least we will not be running away from the Dragon at the end of the day.
Our first loot roll is a 1 and 4 which nets us ... the Gloves of Strength!
We could not ask for a better result that this. With the Gloves of Strength, we can use the Morningstar purchased from the Order to dispatch the Tremendous Dragon. This is an absolutely fantastic find. Between the warhorse, our Armor, the Gloves of Strength and the Morningstar, we can now dispatch all Monsters but the Winged Demon and Octopus with relative ease.
The Black Knight immediately dons the Gloves Of Strength, and switches weapons to the Morningstar.
Our second loot roll results in 2 and 6, and we recover the Penetrating Grease.
The Penetrating Grease is a handy treasure, as it allows you to bypass armor when it is applied to your edged weapon. It will not be useful in conjunction with the Morningstar, since that is not an edged weapon, but we might keep this treasure nevertheless.
Our third loot roll is, again, a 2 and 6. As there are only five treasures left in the Lair, we get nothing.
Our last loot roll is a pair of fives, and we uncover the Dragonfang Necklace.
The Dragonfang Necklace allows the owner to control one Dragon. I've never seen this item used in a Magic Realm game, but a Player using a character with access to purple magic might find it handy. Ironically, since today is day 21, and purple magic is available throughout the Magic Realm, this item is "awakened". It will be interesting to see if, during the combat encounter step, the combat engine allows me to cast the spell control dragons. I can sell this treasure to the Lancers, and obtain 12 fame in addition to the gold price.
The combat encounter steps finds the Black Knight hidden, and facing off against the Tremendous Dragon who, prior to today, was invulnerable. But now, with the Gloves of Strength and the Morningstar, the tables have turned and it the Black Knight who has the upper hand.
Having looked at our options during combat, casting control dragons is unavailable. I presume that is the case since the Black Knight has no spell chits to play, in order to cast a spell.
The first thing the Black Knight does, while hidden, is alert the Morningstar. You may recall that in the past, he has alerted his mace using his FIGHT M5 chit. He will do something similar with the Morningstar. The difference is that while the mace is a medium weapon, the Morningstar is a heavy one. He can only play FIGHT chits that are the same weight, or greater, than the weapon being wielded.
Therefore, rather than using his FIGHT M5 chit, he must use or FIGHT H6 to alert his morningstar. We don't want to use the Gloves of Strength to alert the Morningstar, as that will make the Gloves unavailable during our attack. The Black Knight needs those Gloves during combat, to deal the fatal blow.
During combat, we play the now alerted Morningstar with our Gloves of Strength.
As a result, we kill the Tremendous Dragon. As we played the Gloves of Strength, they increase our Morningstar's damage from heavy to tremendous, which we need to inflict in order to kill the Dragon. And the Morningstar's alerted speed of 3 is faster than the Dragon's move speed of 6, so we undercut the Dragon's attempt to dodge our attack.
We end the day with an additional 10 fame and 10 notoriety, for dispatching the Tremendous Dragon. Therefore, we now have 20/10 fame, 76/60 notoriety, and 63/30 gold towards our victory conditions.
Oh, man! Talk about luck!!
ReplyDeleteYou're telling me. That's the way Magic Realm games seem to go.
ReplyDeleteSo I had to try my luck at Black Knight. Unlucky 3rd turn encounter with a demon ended my enthusiasm.
ReplyDeleteI'll give it another go.
Double hides during the first two weeks are a must. My recommendation is to avoid monsters until you kill the guards and recover an axe or broadsword. If I can ask, how did you get cornered by the demon?
ReplyDelete