Geek Weekend!

Starring: Jon's 20-hour beans! And Theta's Blueberry liqueur! Assorted good bier!

And Olaf Olafsson, priest of the the Norse god Frey, who'd been woefully miscast as a combat bandaid, when he's really a charismatic booster of harvests and fertility.

Jon's practically adult stepkids were up for a visit and they joined the game of their childhood with gusto. Piter's room temperature IQ "Sorry Excuse For an Elf" (SEFEtm) and Celeste's elven slicky-boy joined to complete the adventure originally doomed by Wendy, she of the stormy eyes.

The party lived on the ragged edge of survival until Olaf was eviscerated by an immensely strong Hellcat. Oops! The Bandaid's gone! Husband your healing potions! Olaf hadn't been much of a Bandaid to that point, prefering to use divinations and elemental magic to steer and dig the party around some obstacles. After the death of my character, I roleplayed a dwarven warrior guardian summoned by Mayta, the gnomish slicky-illusionist, a favorite of Jon's wife. While SEFE and I held off a hallway packed with undead, Mayta and Celeste's Nanek scouted ahead invisibly and stumbled across the Big Bad Lady Priestess in a secret room slathering on protective spells like Tammy Faye Baker piled on the make-up. While the two little invisible scouts whispered their argument over who would attempt the first back-stab, I added in my own high-pitched Mayta voice, "I know, let's do Rock, Paper, Scissors! 1 - 2 - 3! Okay, what did YOU get?"

Invisible Gnome Humor. Either you get it or you don't.

Long story slightly shorter, they barely squeaked out a win without losing anybody else. Since the rescue team outnumbered the raised team (consisting only of Jon's wife's Paladin), the party voted that the lone Resurrection scroll in their possession be used on Olaf, instead of the first party's cleric. [Ominous music here. Or Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries] Apparantly, Olaf's third heroic entry to Valhalla was the charm... he failed his Resurrection Survival roll spectacularly, so their only resort was to dig through his pockets looking for loose change.

Wendy would later survive getting Raised from the dead and immediately beseech the Paladin to destroy the Amulet that summons Manes. This after a tearfully heartfelt apology (not delivered in character, BTW) for getting everyone killed.

Olaf's parting gift to his firends was that his share of the experience points was divided up and distributed to the rest of the rescue party.

Unfortunately, I'm still on the hook for providing a Bandaid for the party composed of the "rescue elements" next time, Not to worry, I've accumulated several 6th Level clerics over the years, most of them with "more on the ball" than Olaf, who is, as we speak, drinking mead from the naughtily shed breastplate of a Valkyrie somewhere. Vikings can party.