The battle for the most epicosity

For those of you who've played a Dark Sun dungeon you'll know how rough it is. Both of my characters will now forever HATE the desert.
So, my husband, Sir Jex of the Shifting Hand, found a level 1-3 Dark Sun campaign in one of the Dungeon Magazines online. We've never done a preconstruct so in the spirit of trying new things we started what will be known as the Desert Crawl. It was tough but fun, especially once we leveled up to 2 and a second defender rolled into the group, courtesy of my brother in law Sir Will the Blockade.

The Final Battle rolls around and we know, almost for a fact, that we are going to die. Jex gave our group a 5% chance of living through it; not winning, just surviving. It went something like this:

We're only a few hours out from the trade city of Tir. All the skiffs are intact, no crew has been lost yet. Even with getting by some of the battles by the skin of our teeth, we've done well. Only one last crest to climb over and we're home free.
Over that hill comes three bad ass looking assassins riding beaked and clawed 10 foot tall dinosaurs that Jex nicknamed 'riding crocks'.
There's a big speech about how he's going to take all our hard earned treasure for himself and crush us into the sand. You know the kind of monologue Dr. Doom would be proud of. Then they charge.
Verdant, Will's big bad scottsman brawler, runs in like Leroy Jenkins and takes on the assassin who seems to be the leader. The riding crock claws the crap out of him. The lead assassin leaps from his dino to a nearby 10foot tall rock and shoots the crap out of Verdant with his crossbow.
Gino, Jex's character that Will plays during battle, runs in behind him to try and keep him from getting owned. All the assassins start leaping from their dinos and letting them run around to eat us!
It's at this point I think that we're going to die.
Tacit, my little teeny bopper chaos sorceress, gets cornered by a dino. We've encountered these things before. Tacit is scared of them. So I play true to the role and have her screaming and flailing like the little 16 year old she is. Jex is really great about roleplay mid-battle. "Tacit's screaming scares the riding crock so it attacks her instead of Zii. It's also screaming in terror back at Tacit."
Kragen, Jex's dragon man, helps the girls out of the corner they get pinned into with the riding crock-dino and between the three of them the dino dies.
Jex thought: okay this is good, a little reward for their effort before their slaughtered.
Verdant is dead, Gino is nearly dead, Kragon who's the only one who can heal is finally free to go help, Zii is going to die soon, Tacit is on top of a rock screaming at the top of her lungs while the assassins run around like whirlwinds slicking the crap out of the boys and Zii gets half eaten by a dino-crock.

In a last ditch effort to survive the conscious members of the party formulate a plan to strike a blow at the well oiled killing machine that is the trio of assassins. Kragon is going to use is acid breath on them to 'soften them up' so that Tacit can blast them to hell and Zii can keep what's left from hitting them back.
Okay. No one thought it would work as beautifully at it did. Kragon hit everyone, including the dying Gino, with the dragon breath which gave the girls an extra 5 damage to all their attacks. Tacit rolled a 20, and criticaled with her daily power (that we call the Glitter Blaster because that how I first described it) that did six D6 (six sided Dice) +6 damage, and she had feats that brought the +6 up to a +10. She then spent her action point and hit with another power, made of multicolored bolts of lightning, that she can keep attacking with as long as she keeps rolling evens and hitting. And hit, and rolled the highest number on the dice that she could. LUCKY! +10 and +10 more because of Kragon's acid attack. In one turn Tacit dealt out over 60 points of damage, even bosses don't just walk away from that. And with the power that let her keep hitting she hit the other two assassins and the riding dino for at least 10 points of damage each. It was a beautiful thing.
The Lead assassin died before he started a turn with less than half his hit points. Zii then hit the other assassin and riding crock that had ripped into Gino despite his Jacky Chan dodging. The assassin died, Kragen brought back Verdant who went running off after the other dino. Then he brought back Gino who killed the remaining riding crock and assassin.
Between all the boys the battle ended like this: "Verdant sticks his sword deep into the riding crock's thigh, keeping it from moving any closer to Zii, who for some reason is pulsing purple in rhythm with her heartbeat. A flash of lighting zips by him for an instant as Gino tries to lightning lure the beast and fails. Kragen runs toward Gino and jumps off the gith and goes sailing through the air beside Verdant. 'This end's now!!!' He roars as he sticks the creature in the neck, slides down, guts the riding crock and slices off a leg as he wobbles to the ground. With a screech the dino goes down nearly landing on top of the dragonborne. 'Alright... I'm done.' Kragon groans. Verdant sticks his sword into the sand as he takes a knee, blood is still leaking from his many wounds. Gino sighs gratefully and sits in the sand with a huff. Zii doesn't bother with formality and falls like a toppled statue into the dunes beside the muddy water. Tacit is the only one with energy enough to celebrate their unlikely victory."
In metagame terms: Kragen had nothing but his at-will powers and 6 hit points, Verdant the same with 8 hit points, Gino lucked out with one utility power and 7 hit points plus 5 bubble points (what we call temporary hit points). Zii had spent everything and had 2 hit points. Tacit had 13 hit points.

For all of that Jex said we earned Brass Monkeys (Sprite and Sherbet) and all kinds of gold. Will demanded I play the Final Fantasy victory sound I have on my phone because "damnit we deserve fan fair!"

These are the moments in playing table top games that make them fun and feel worthwhile.

Salty Dogs: Vol III The Final Chapter

In preparation of moving Jex has tried to get our DD4e campaign to a good stopping point. So we've had two really good, long, sessions with Missy and Shaun recently. Hopefully tonight or tomorrow we'll get to play World of Darkness... but I won't get my hopes up.

Here's the ending to our little story.

The dice were against us! They were! Rolling everything under a four during an entire encounter is proof enough for me. I started counting on failing and only using my one invigorating fighter power (crushing surge) so that I could get what we've dubbed "bubble points" (they're temporary life points/hit points).

The story though is actually pretty sweet.

While Mara is dragging the NPC Zeni across the dirt road of Dead's End the Bard Aard (Shaun) is freaking out, the Halfling we met in town (Missy) isn't quite sure what to do, so she starts locking the doors on Zeni's side of the town so that maybe she'll have to go to the Sheriff's office. Well then Aard tells Mara telepathically to 'trust him' and attacks her, pushing her 5 spaces away and breaking her hold on Zeni. He tries to play good cop bad cop but it doesn't work. Mara's pissed but she decides to try the whole diplomacy thing. Mara and Zeni have the same personality according to Aard the Shard Bard so when Mara almost talked Zeni to their side (mara has a -1 to diplomacy btw) everyone was really surprised. But that fell through. We kept going back and forth between trying to be diplomatic and trying to knock the crap out of the NPC. Zeni was so bent on beating Mara even once the encounter was kind of over and she found the door was locked she chased her and stabbed her in the back.

In response Mara stomps across the street the flings open the door to the armor shop, which connects to the general store who's door was locked. There on the other side stood Casey in all her 3 foot tall glory. Heavily armored Mara was more than enough to conceal the little Rogue. Mara told Casey to run before turning and flinging her arm at the open portal. "There! Go through and unlock your freaking door, it's not like there's people clamoring to buy your shiz. Leave me the hell alone!"

Zeni stomps passed her and says: "If I see anything amiss I'm coming after you."

"Whatever." Mara huffs and starts to walk away.

Well, the Bard had used his 'shard swarm' teleporting power to get into the general store (and Shaun's so good at NOT metagaming that he kept his knowledge that the fight was over between Mara and Zeni out of his character's head) and in an attempt at drawing attention away from Mara he breaks the window. Upon hearing the window break Mara face palms and Zeni comes after her.

Luckily, Casey and another NPC who looks like he could be Mara's brother, Telecor, are able to get Zeni off of Mara, who at this point is literally at 1Hit Point. After everyone decided to beat the crap out of Zeni she went down fairly easily. They brought her into the Sheriff's office and were like, BLEH!

Clide, the deputy that's been keeping the towns people from dying of the plague, asks the group if they'd be trusted with a secret. My character is like "no." Hooray for Shaun's Bard being all persuasive and stuff. In the end they all go down and the Sheriff is all chained up in a cell. He asks the group to be deputies and they're like "sure, why not." Except for Mara, who does NOT want to stay there and is like "Meh, let me sleep on it." They get locked in the cells and talk it over a little and then decide that it'd be a good thing to do. Hearing a noise Casey unlocks the cells and they all go searching for the noise, but don't find it.

The next morning they wake to the Sheriff (who's a big minotaur) all chained up with an apparatus in front of him that has 4 ropes, a frame, all attached to a sword. Clide tells us that all we have to do to be Deputies is kill the Sheriff. Everyone's like "Okay." Except Mara, who doesn't like it because the Sheriff is asleep. She tells everyone that she'll kill him if his eyes are open, but she's not an assassin. Clide won't wake him up. Mara won't kill the Sheriff if he's out like a light. So, she says. "Fine, the rest of you kill him, Clide lock me up down here till this stupid plague finishes me off. Whatever. But I won't kill a sleeping man!"

This is not good enough for Clide. Who then locks us all up and leaves. Then Shaden shows up and is all like "you guys are stupid. You should've killed the Sheriff. blah blah, i'm a dick, blah."

Aard 'victim of the faewild's Casey and Mara so that we surround Shaden and we try to kill him. But he goes all shadowy on us and gets away. Another smoke bomb gets dropped in and Mara can't get the trap door open even though she cracks the wood.

When they awake with an even nastier headache than before, a progressed plague, yay -4 to all rolls; no one is happy and all the locks are jammed so Casey can't work her magic. Out of nowhere the armless asian man from the infirmary shows up and gives us hall packages of nasty bread and water while saying: "I'm sorry my friends to see you so down, perhaps what I have to give you will lift you out of your sorrows. I'm sorry the only silverware I could find was a butter knife." When he leaves and everyone opens their pouches Mara's like "Yes! yes Yeeeesss! * Maniacal laughter*" Inside there's a crude, thick, kind of metal bar/flat head screw driver. And Mara knows exactly what to do with it. She excitedly tells the Bard (who was expecting magic levitation bread or something) to use it to get the pins out of the jail door so they can escape.

The Sheriff wakes up and asks what's going on. The Bard, who loves a melodrama, tells him. The Sheriff, with the aid of his creepy spirit falcon, gets us out then we all go searching for Clide. We find one of the missing guys in the rubble of the lower end of town. Keep searching, then find Clide fighting with the nasty tempered bar keep. Aard just loves his 'victim of the faewild' ability and teleports Casey and Mara to either side of him. But Clide gets away, not before Jex can throw in 'I shot the Sheriff, but I didn't shoot the deputy' to call Shaden to the fray out of nowhere.

We pummel Shaden, take a quick breather because in the process of pummelling him we used up most of our special powers and lost one of our party. After taking Telecor to the infirmary Jex called 'the low beds' we take off after Clide in a surprisingly tactical manner, considering our group's history of 'let's kill it!'

Casey is being all sneaky sneaky in the dark. Mara is trying to be. Everyone gets to an upper room above the stalls and Mara uncovers her Sun Rod. THERE! Right next to her is Clide he starts to say something like "finally you fools have~" and Mara is like "Gah!" and hits him in the face with the Sun Rod. Being as how Sun Rod's turn on and off via tapping the light goes out and everyone's confused. The Sheriff throws his Sun Rod in a corner, yay, now we can see.

Then we fight Clide, who not only likes to hit Mara and only Mara, but also has a whirlwind vortex of fail around him that keeps us from doing much damage.

He's near his end and says something like: "This isn't over." And jumps out the window only to be knocked flat by the creepy spirit bird.

Mara runs out to see if he's dead or not. She can't really tell until he says her name. She leans down to give him a few choice words before smashing his head in but he tells her about the cure for the plague and that he was really the one behind everything and gives her a message to tell the Sheriff. She says she'll fix everything for him. Suddenly he asks about a Scepter, if she's had any visions about one. When she says no he tells her not to touch it that he has a feeling it's... and the Sheriff's boot crushes his face and kills him.

Mara bolts up and is all indignant. "What the hell was that for, he was telling me stuff."

"We have no more need for his lies." The Sheriff replies.

Mara gets in his face and stabs him in the center of his chest with a finger. "You could use a little more mercy, and a lot more tact."

They all go to the Sheriff's office and Mara tells them about the cure. After a few misconceptions and a lot of character interaction Mara finally finishes the brew and drinks some.

It tastes like mint, then butt, then rancid butt, then back to a nice mint. Mara then takes some to Telecor, because her companions don't trust her alchemical skillz. The Sheriff is all like "meh, you're wasting your time." and Mara's all like "I didn't ask you!"

Everyone gets better, the bad tempered bar tender is suspicious, and now our little group can go one of twenty differing ways. Damn.

Mara goes back to the Sheriff and tells him what Clide said: "About acting on Faith despite all opposition." and it gets all emotional. Mara then leaves and proudly announces to the Bard that he should be proud of her because she made it through something emotional without making fart noises. All is well in Dead's End, and now, we have the world before us.

Sweet.