The Final Session

 I don't remember what the actual number of this session in Dubzaron was, I have left the server and no longer have access to the data. This will be my final blog on the Dubzaron sessions.

Arganos, An Adventure Unrealized

The session started out with the team wanting to return to the Undersea Temple of Lamalla. Yes, the Curse had thankfully ended through the heroic efforts of Vince McMaximus and a rag tag band of adventurers. It became clear to folks, though, that the Curse of Lamalla had reawakened the curse intrinsic to some very valuable gems and the only way to permanently cleanse these gems (for sale, of course) was to again destroy the altar and THIS time cleanse the sinkhole of evil.

Very Scary!

An interesting observation came to me as I watched the "elite" players wrestle with an actual nonprogrammed problem. They were clueless and enervated. This should have been a more powerful hint that the world I had built was just beyond them. As a character in the game, I had made a point of cleansing evil so that it might not return to its prior haunts...as the rules make pretty clear will happen. Somehow the rules didn't seem to matter to other world builders in the game.

Out of the fulness of a man's heart doth the mouth speak, or so I have read. Similarly, an abundance of chaos in a man's soul will bleed into his art. No amount of posturing or kayfabing will hide it. This rule was born out in Dubzaron in spades.

The team did manage to assemble and head out onto the post tsunami destroyed flats that used to house a warehouse district and an entrance to the temple. Given the general inability of folks to process clearly posted information, a constitutional inability to be troubled with background things like "weather", they had ignored the tsunami occurrence. On their first foray, they began to realize the problem while searching for the entrance when a horde of surf ghouls attacked. Many of the party members died, one particularly notable one was a gnome played by an astonishingly incompetent "elite" player who had gnome killed off in similar circumstances a long time ago. He is unable to process information of any complexity and has even less capacity to plan actions proactively. 

Unfortunate precedent has been set by other DM's in Dubzaron allowing players to reroll characters to jump back into the game. In this situation, it did make sense as they had been able to flee the encounter and a couple of people were alive to form a new expedition.

Why do it, though?

Water breathing magic could be obtained fairly readily in the large Auran city of Arganos. The mage recognized the necessity and recommended the course of action only to be shut down by perhaps the least imaginative player in the history of Dubzaron. The cost (a couple hundred gold for the whole party) would be prohibitive was his argument. Unreal. I was stunned. Here is a real sandbox and tremendous potential for wealth, and they walked away. They set their "elite" sites on...lair smashing...and failed to do that as well.

The signs were there all along

So very bad. 

Perhaps letting my opinion of the colossally bad play be known was poor form on my part and advanced the ire of the Astonishingly Incompetent In Any Language player, I neither know nor care. I had had enough of the generally poor quality play. I had only recently realized that most (all?) of the prior delving had been done in half read published modules. Any genuine creativity or world building was actively suppressed. It was time to be done with Dubzaron and the Astonishingly Incompetent one sealed the deal by accusing me of underhanded, "sleazy" dealing with my...get this...Venturer  (merchant) character. This should have been easily dealt with by those who had reviewed records. Should have...but there were crickets.

I was stunned.

This wasn't an "in game" slander, this was an in real life accusation leveled against me that was allowed to stand by men who surprisingly lack honor. Clearly, I had misjudged the group with whom I had started this game with a couple years back. No, truly I had judged that group rightly, even Astonighingly Incompetent In Any Language. Most of the starting group quit long ago with many noting Calvin Ball as the Dubzaron equivalent of Rule Zero. At the end, it was only me and the half man. Even the DM had quit, truth be told. 

Lord Steward Briarwhisper

Two of my characters had advanced to Name Level and so it was time to complete the win. Once all loose ends were tied up, it was up to Calvin Ball to move the nets and arbitrarily change rules. At the point the rules change, either players and referees agree to the changes, or the game is over. This principle had been brought up once before when Calvin Ball reared its head. The game continued then because the arbitrary was put away. This time I was not going to argue the point. 

Aisoth is dead, Mornya is Queen of the Istrith Forest and BriarWhisper is her Lord Steward.

MadEye and Buffy

Vince McMaximus is the head of a Borderlands spanning trading empire while MadEye has returned to Olgar's Tower to write histories and head up the faculty of Sepia University.

The rules changed after these achievements and on that day, the game ended. Whatever shadows linger on, it is a pale imitation of what was and is no more.

The End.

POST SCRIPT: Gaius reminded me that he yet lives!!! Whole lot of winning here!!

We Win