Spot Check

[Rhea Hartman]

Rhea raised her eyebrows at this, but returned her focus to the game when Tristan did. Her eyes still flicked up occasionally to track Mandy's hair flipping, however. She must really, really want to get in his pants. Rhea couldn't imagine anything else that would blind an intelligent woman to how very gay Cecil was.

"Well, the dragon certainly didn't like it much," Rhea agreed. She followed little of the efficient exchange between Cecil and Mandy, preoccupied with how hopeless such a maneuver would be in a real life. Tristan returned her focus to the game to help her through her own attack. She returned his high-five feeling half pleased with herself and half embarrassed. She hoped no photos of this ended up on Facebook.

Rhea didn't know what quick-draw was, and frankly she was still pretty fuzzy on abilities in general, but on Cecil's simplified sheets even she didn't have a hard time finding it. "Yeah, I do. Of course I'll take another shot at that thing." She picked up the same dice that Tristan had showed her for her earlier roll and sent them skittering along the table top. She watched them rock to a halt and asked, "Does Tristan get to do his preacher fire again?"

[Cecil Wathen]

When Rhea announced she was going to take a shot at the fleeing dragon Cecil nodded in approval. “Good!” As the numbers rolled out, Cecil made a note of the result on the dragon's stat card that he kept hidden behind the monitor.

Tristan smiled at Rhea and gave a small shrug of his shoulders. “Not just yet. Ones that powerful, they need to recharge a bit, so to speak, before I can blast 'em again. I can still cast fireballs though, which is bad news for golem-face over there.”

Cecil nodded in agreement, turning his attention back to the table. “Right, so, the dragon is buggering off that way and showing no want to turn around. The golem is now very aware of Mandy and the guards, so he's going to charge...” Cecil picked up the rather sizeable miniature, scooting it across the table and setting it down in front of the figures of Mandy's character and the small contingent of city guards. “He's going to try to crush the nearest one, which would be... this guy with the spear.” Cecil picked up the relevant die and rolled them out on the table for everyone to see. “Natural twenty. Ouch. Sucks to be that guy.” By the time Cecil was done rolling the damage, he gave a small shake of his head and made the guard mini lie down. “Where there was a guard, there is now some crushed armour and a bloody smear on the ground.”

The guards then took their turn, managing to harm the golem a little but piss it off a whole lot more. The crossbow guard failed completely, rolling a one that resulted in him accidentally putting a bolt into the arm of a comrade. Mandy sighed in frustration. “Can I take a free action to smack him on the back of the head?” When Cecil gave her permission, she nodded curtly. “Then I do. Really, really hard.”

Cecil gave a small chuckle before turning to his brother. “Tris?” Now that it had charged the golem was slightly out of range of Tristan's more powerful fire spells, so he spent his turn reciting a prayer to give the allies +1 bonus and the enemies -1 penalties to their next actions.

Once that was done, Cecil turned back to the girls. “Right. Mandy, you're up, then it's back to Rhea.”

[Rhea Hartman]

Magic that needed to recharge sounded like a stupid idea to Rhea, but she wasn't about to argue. She had seen Mandy flipping through a rulebook—not a leaflet like the kind that came with board games, but an actual book—and she didn't want to go anywhere near one. “So we're just going to let the dragon escape?” Then again, they still had to deal with the giant snowman. She frowned at the description of the guard's death. “I guess we'll have to.”

Mandy leaned forward to count squares on the map, tapping her pencil through the air in mime as she did. “So,” she said, making a note on her sheet. “Now that crack shot here hopefully has the sense to keep his crossbow to himself, I'm going to use a smoke bomb.” She pointed her pencil at the base of the figurine. “Aiming for his feet, to give the soldiers some cover.” She rolled to hit without any trouble. “At least these giant bastards are hard to miss,” she commented to Tristan as she completed her turn by moving her character around to the other side of the golem. “Next round I'm going to try to bait it back towards you, Tristan,” she said. “Get it in range of your flame strike.” She turned courteously to Rhea. “All right, you're next.”

“How do I go down stairs?” Rhea turned her sheet over to see if it was listed on the back. “I should probably go help Mandy, right? How many squares does that take?”

Tristan did not look at Mandy. “One round to get back down,” he explained. “That's a good idea! Then next round, you can help her draw the golem back towards the tower.”

Rhea felt absurdly flattered by this praise and tried not to show it. “All right. And you and the merchant guy will stay put.” She wanted to hear the rest of that stammering story once they dealt with the snowman.