Whatever happened to Thorgun?

What indeed.

We left Thorgun a long way back, didn't we. Back here. Last we heard of him he and his uncle K were in Kingsport in the midst of a store-bought module. But, uh, that was a YEAR ago. So maybe there's something to all these folks telling me I ought to post more often.

Thorgun's had an interesting story. I'm going to do my best to get caught up.

We played the module for a while, despite having started in the wrong place and getting everything out of order. Kingsholm, it turned out, had issues. Straneg digging sounds from the graveyard, and now one of the graveyard sentinels had disappeared! But, problem: due to GM slackitude, our heroes had come down through the graveyard. Rather than appear as potential saviors, these two half-orcs seemed like the likely source of whatever mischief was brewing. Somehow, I don't recall how, they talked their way out of getting thrown in the stocks, and further managed to persuade the mayor to let them investigate the graveyard. Here, both E and his dad soon faced some interesting choices.

In E's case this came when they were attacked by wolves in the graveyard. Uncle K soon fell, badly wounded. After some deliberation, E dragged his uncle into a bush and guarded him, as best I recall, though at first he had it in mind to run away. First encounter with the idea that such games can present us with "real" choices.

My "real" choice came a bit later, when I discovered the tomb up the hill (into which our heroes had found their way) contained the beaten corpses of humans who had been killed by the marauders who were in fact digging for magic items deeper within the tomb. This was definitely fodder for older kids, and I edited swiftly on the fly. They fought some zombies, then some skeletons, perhaps needing to take another break as uncle K again went down for the count. Eventually they reached a locked door with, I believe, a large Beholder image on it. And there, they stopped.

They didn't really stop. But E. decided he'd had enough of store-bought adventures. As he put it, what was the point of just COPYING what someone else had already written? I tried to explain how modules worked, but in one way he had a point. He wanted adventures that were just for him. Who wouldn't?

So, like Ferdinand the Bull, he and Uncle K made their slow peasant way back to their ancestral pastures (along the Dark Highway, of course) -- back to Bladesbat Cave to sit, just quietly, and smell the Grick. And plot their next move.

Champions

If you've played RPGs, you may have played the game Champions at some point. This was (is, actually) an RPG with some interesting twists. For one thing, you built your character based on a pool of points that was not generated by dice rolls. Among the things I recall fondly was that you had to specify both specific advantages (Bruce Wayne very wealthy ...) and disadvantages (Rhas al Ghul is sworn to kill him; he has a milk allergy; etc.) In some cases, again as far as I recall, you could boost your advantages if you took corresponding disadvantages, though the GM couldn't let this get out of hand (he lives in a space fortress in geosynchronous orbit, with enough firepower to destroy the moon, but an entire ancient civilization under the Antarctic ice cap has sworn to destroy him).

Well, anyway, the only point is, I kind of liked Champions.

Since he discovered D&D, E has had the habit of making "a D&D" of anything interesting. For a while this year he went through a Spider-Man phase. So he wanted to do some superhero role-playing. He invented a blob-like character called Rashanga. Here, as best I can reconstruct my transcription of a month or so ago, is he account of his origins.

Saturn -- part asteroid -- hit the Moon -- astronauts come, found smooth black rock -- they put the black stuff in a warm container, and the alien formed. At first he was just blobby stuff that moved all around, he wasn't in the shape of a humanoid. He was born from the warmth, he scared the astronauts at first, he gummed them up, because he was just born. He made them crash into the Hudson River. At first he just tried to climb onto something, and control its mind, but it was an astronaut.

He sees New York as his territory -- when he fights villains, he's really just defending itself from its territory. He can turn his goo into human form. He stays in human form -- only one human knows his secret, a scientist, Doctor Kafka. Only this guy knows his weakness -- infared heat (sic).

He can divide -- keeps the same mind. Even into hundreds! Well, he's never divided into more than six. It's stressful to divide into hundreds.

He has sense glands behind his eyes. When it goes off it shows off a big vantage point of the city, and his eyes glow white. He sees all the normal people as orange and the bad guys as green. He glow purple (?) Shows the most dangerous bad guy first ...

So there. Like reconstructing a Spanish ship's log. But this old manuscript suggests my son is more inventive than I am. :-)