The Curious Adventures of Meg and Lyz

Last week, Gary Gygax died. It's been covered by pretty much every news outlet around, but in case you don't have the internet or something, Mr. Gygax was the co-creator of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. I've only been playing D&D for about two to three years, ever since a certain friend of mine got me the Player's Handbook for Christmas (and regretted it when I made him play, of course).

There's not much I can say about Mr. Gygax that hasn't been covered by those worthier than I. D&D has definitely affected my life as a writer, as my feeble attempts at DMing games can attest to, but it's really just been a fun way to hang out with friends and play an awesome game.

Recently, I've been playing in a game with Amelia and Sean, Sean as the DM, and, as much as Amelia and I sometimes wish we had heavier things to throw at Sean, the game has been a lot fun so far. Sean has requested that I use this blog to keep track of what happens in our game, so what follows is a brief summary of our game thus far.


The game started as a solo game for an old character of mine. After being sucked into a portal of unknown origin at the end of our last game, my character, a changeling rogue named Meg, spent a year in a squalid prison cell going slowly mad. The game opened with her deciding it was time to try to escape, which she did, with help from a fellow prisoner, a cat-like creature named Scout. Meg's escape attempt led to her discovering that the complex she was being held in was far larger than she had thought. Her explorations led her through several labs of various purpose where she picked up some interesting books on alchemy and artificing.

The book on artificing led her to start trying some of this magic stuff she kept reading about, to moderate success. She eventually started disguising herself as a servant in order to move about the complex more easily, but after getting mixed up in a teleportation experiment, she found herself in a lab that was off-limits to servants, one that happened to specialize in dissection. Forced to fight her way out, she had help from a new prisoner that came to in the middle of the fight and brought a few well-timed lightning strikes to the altercation.

Meg figured this could be useful in the future, so the prisoner, a halfling witch named Lyz on a never-ending search for her lost boyfriend (played by Amelia), joined Meg in exploring the complex. Their explorations took them to a library, where Lyz's people skills successfully tempered Meg's stab-happy impatience and they learned from the librarian that the complex was actually on the Ethereal Plane. This was not good news. They did, however, find a secret passage in the library where they were able to rest and plan without fear. The secret passage's original occupant, a fellow prisoner and oddly-familiar anthromorphic bear, proved unfriendly. He was dealt with.

It didn't take long for the two of them to start messing with one of the laboratories, resulting in accidentally killing a kitten and melding its soul into the body of a mouse. Don't ask. The mouse/cat decided the best thing for its sanity was to to stick with Meg, becoming her familiar of sorts. She named him Sprocket.

This event also completely destroyed the lab, but the clumsy pair were rescued from trigger-happy guards by the head servant, a shadowy man whose name I can't spell. He allowed Meg and Lyz use of one of the servant's quarters, and gave them properly-fitting servant's uniforms to help them blend in better, and offered to act as a fence, finally allowing Meg to get rid of some of the items she had "found" during her explorations.

Emboldened by their contact, Meg and Lyz continued exploring, and learned from a dead man that the complex was a research facility that used power from the elemental planes to fuel their research. Apparently they were also working on making a permanent portal to the Material to allow employees free access back and forth, but this project was abandoned for an unknown reason that also lead to the dead guy's death.

Further exploration lead the pair to both the infirmary, where they met Mongo, a "healer", and stocked up on some healing items, and the guard training room, where they both received some combat training and used it to knock out the guards and raid the armory for some good weapons.

They eventually made their way back to one of the large labs, one with a mysterious chained up door. Deciding there was no good reason a door should be chained up like that, they set upon trying to open it, first by burning the chains off with acid, then removing the bar, then using a molotov cocktail to burn off the other bars. Beyond the door was a spherical room with four portals, each seemingly leading to a different elemental plane. Not liking their chances of survival on an elemental plane, they instead investigated an odd elemental cloud forming in the middle of the room, seemingly drawing power from all four portals. When they got too close, however, they were drawn into the cloud and buffeted painfully down a current of raw elemental power.

When they finally broke free of the stream, they were barely alive, but found themselves in a small pond surrounded by tropical trees. Believing they had finally made it off the Ethereal Plane, they spent a relieved 16 hours resting before discovering they were actually in one of the zoo exhibits in the complex. This revelation resulted in several bottle caps being thrown at Sean's head.

They escaped the exhibit with help from the exhibit's original occupant, an oddly-familar sentient chest with legs. Meg and Lyz are currently hiding out in a forest in a nearby open cavern, a part of the complex they have not yet fully explored.