Saturday 2-23-13
So just when I thought everything was smooth, I discovered that my brand new awesome neck pillow is missing. Apparently all the terminal hopping had claimed a casualty.
I decided to get another (less awesome) one when the wheels on my luggage LITERALLY fell off. Brookstone was very accommodating and let me put my stuff into a brand new bag.
Travel gremlins 3, Mike 0.
Oh and did I mention the new bag seems ‘bigger’ to the Lufthansa people. :(
Friday 2-22-13
So my vaccinations included a series of three shots for Hepatitis A & B. I had the first one a month ago and I needed to get my second one on Monday, but the place called and had to reschedule it to last night. Well, my memory is crap, so while I was scrambling for all the last minute packing that needed to be done, I realized I had forgotten to go get my shot! I left a message for the clinic place to see if I could get in first thing this morning…then the ice started coming down. Luckily the clinic came through and called me early to get me in and I got my shot, so off to the airport I went.
I get to the airport and walk in the Delta doors and I see a HUGE line of all these military guys. So I think wow, maybe 2 hours early wasn’t enough. As I walk to the back of the line, I see my cousin Alan McNeal directing the military guys. I say hello and strike up a conversation (he doesn’t recognize me) and after a few minutes he realizes, there is no way in hell this old fat guy can be deploying anywhere (not sure where they were going) and he asks me where I’m headed and I say Detroit and he tells me I’m in the wrong line…the Delta counter is on the other side! Now that line is very short. :) Thanks for helping me out Alan!
So, because I can’t really take 2 checkin bags, my carry on’s are packed to the gills. And sure enough, the little flight to Detroit doesn’t have room for my size bags. Not a big deal, except I’ve packed them so tightly and expertly, that it’s difficult to extricate just the pieces of equipment I need to use on the flight. It’s a tight flight and I have a HUGE guy across the aisle…he looks (and smells) homeless. Ugh.
I arrive in Detroit and the Delta guy in Indy had told me when I get on Lufthansa in Detroit, it’s in a different terminal and the gate people will direct me. He also said they will transfer my bag for me so I won’t have to pick it up and tote it all the way to the other terminal. First thing I do is ask the gate people where to go…they’ve never heard of Lufthansa, much less another terminal. Luckily they were able to dig up a lady who seems to remember back in the old days that there is a shuttle that goes to this other terminal. She gives me very detailed directions (go to where they big hotel used to be and turn left or right) and so off I go. After studying some maps and starting to worry, I cross my fingers and go to the ground transportation where I see a sign for a terminal to terminal shuttle. While waiting in line I verify with a couple that this is the right bus (they have been looking for an hour) and we all get to the correct terminal, where I have to check in (and go through security) AGAIN!
At this point I find out that Lufthansa does not have my bag. I start to panic, but apparently the guy in Indy was good enough to give me all the luggage codes, so they can route my bag to the plane. I now get in line for security. In Indy I sailed through, in Detroit my bad full of chocolate bars looks like a bag full of C-4 on the security machine. They check it carefully. They were actually very friendly and nice, so I can’t complain.
I am now typing this at CHAMPPS next to my terminal and I have approximate 90 minutes until my next flight. Once I get on that one, I will only be available via email and Facebook. I hope to have some pictures in future updates.
Today, I’ll tell you about the timing of my trip. Since there are different time zones in play here, I thought a little chart might be handy to know the times both local and here at home (Easter Time Zone).
| Local | EST | Location | Notes |
| 2/22/13 Â 1:05 PM | 2/22/13 1:05 PM | Indianapolis | 1 hour 16 min flight time |
| 2/22/13 Â 2:21 AM | 2/22/13 2:21 PM | Detroit | 4 hour wait |
| 2/22/13 Â 6:25 PM | 2/22/13 6:25 PM | Detroit | 8 hour 25 min flight time |
| 2/23/13 Â 8:50 AM | 2/23/13 2:50 AM | Frankfurt | 4 hour wait |
| 2/23/13 Â 1:00 PM | 2/23/13 7:00 AM | Frankfurt | 8 hour 30 min flight time |
| 2/24/13 Â 2:00 AM | 2/23/13 3:30 PM | Bangalore | |
| 2/28/13 Â 5:40 PM | 2/28/13 7:10 AM | Bangalore | 50 min flight time |
| 2/28/13 Â 6:30 PM | 2/28/13 8:00 AM | Chennai | |
| 3/6/13 Â 8:30 AM | 3/5/13 10:00 PM | Chennai | 2 hour 45 min flight time |
| 3/6/13 Â 11:15 AM | 3/6/13 12:45 AM | New Delhi | |
| 3/9/13 Â 10:50 PM | 3/9/13 12:20 AM | New Delhi | 16 hour 30 min flight time |
| 3/10/13 Â 4:50 AM | 3/10/13 4:50 AM | Newark | 4.5 hour wait |
| 3/10/13 Â 9:29 AM | 3/10/13 9:29 AM | Newark | 2 hour 17 min flight time |
| 3/10/13 Â 11:46 AM | 3/10/13 11:46 AM | Indianapolis |
It will be interesting to see how I deal with the jet lag…I’m hoping it’s much like Con on the Cob…5 days of no sleep? No problem! :)
So today I start my Malaria drugs. The history of treatment medication for Malaria is very interesting. The side effects of the medication were sometimes worse than the disease itself! However, for those with a weakened immune system or very young or elderly, the disease is deadly. Lucky for me, today’s medications have far fewer side effects. I basically have to start taking the pills now and will stop 7 days after I leave the “danger zone” which for my trip is Bangalore, the first city I visit.
Speaking of where I’m going, I created a little map to show where I’m going. Unfortunately, I’m only spending time at the Frankfurt airport, and not getting to go around town. I would have liked to spend some time in Germany. Maybe next time, if there is one.
More details tomorrow!
For those of you who don’t know, I’ll be heading to India on Friday for 17 days (4 in transit!). I plan to post frequently about the trip here on Harrowed Halls (for my friends without Facebook) but I’ll cross post the link for my FB friends and family too.
My preparation to go on this trip thus far has been:
I’ll post details about my travel on Friday since I’ll have 8 hours of layovers to figure out what to say! Hopefully I don’t have to pay for Wi-Fi at the airports (although I probably will have to).
Feel free to post comments on Facebook, only those with an account can post here on Harrowed Halls. I’m looking forward to sharing my trip with you all!
 
This week we played an old favorite, Ghost Stories. It’s a cooperative game where the players are Taoist monks trying to prevent a village from being overrun by ghosts. This week’s game had a completely different spin on it because we added the Black Secret expansion. With this expansion one of the players controls a variety of ghosts, demons, and curses. The best evil man for this job was Mike. Not just because he had read the rules, but mostly because he is evil to begin with. In the game Mike is called Wu-Feng.  The expansion also added a few other twists to the game too. Another board, called the catacombs, represented the area under the village. Wu-Feng can summon demons into the catacombs. There they searched for the three urns with which the Shadow of Wu-Feng can be summoned. If this happens, we are in really deep ghost poo. The monks can travel to the catacombs and confront the demons hopefully sending them back to hell where Mike lives. Mike can also cast curses on us and he gets to determine where the ghosts come into the village. All in all we thought we were doomed from the start. One thing in our favor was that when we lose Qi (our life force) instead of going back to a pool of Qi, it goes onto a mantra of our choice. These mantras, once fueled with enough Qi, are powerful spells we can use against the demons and ghosts.
In our game, my monk had the power to reroll dice. Owen’s monk could take two actions and Ben’s monk got an extra colored bean at the beginning of his turn. (Yes, I know they’re not called colored beans, but I can’t remember what they are called.) We also had a fourth monk, sort of a non-playing monk, that we could use his power of special movement if we needed to.
Our game began…
To exorcise a ghost, you have to roll dice equal to the ghost’s color or have enough colored beans to fill in for any dice that failed to roll that color. With this in mind, Owen’s monk was an unstoppable exorcising machine and regularly could kill two ghosts with one roll. Ben and I were another story completely.
Ben rolled three dice and only needed black (or the “wild†color of white) on any die. He failed.
Steve rolled SIX dice and only needed one black…and failed.
Ben later redeemed his suck-i-ness. He needed three black and rolled a black and two wild dice!
As the game progressed we were holding our own and Mike’s demons where having trouble finding the third urn needed to summon the Shadow of Wu-Feng. My monk was in the catacombs trying to kill demons when one of them found the third urn. The Shadow of Wu-Feng was summoned.
On his turn, the Shadow of Wu-Feng can take one of three actions: Attack a monk, move, or haunt a village tile. (If four village tiles are haunted, the monks lose.) Things quickly got desperate. Soon we had three village tiles haunted. Then the Incarnation of Wu-Feng appeared. Fortunately the incarnation was right where Owen could immediately attack it. And it was a relatively easy one to kill. Owen rolls his first attack. He had three dice and needed two yellows—not a single yellow showed up. Owen tried his second attack with the same result. Owen’s dice rolling had gone cold just when we needed it most. Fortunately I could attack the incarnation too. With my reroll ability I basically got to roll six dice looking for two yellows. I failed miserably. The Shadow of Wu-Feng haunted the fourth village tile and we lost.
We moved to a different village.
Chaos Steve
Some Pics:
Widow Targa, Rune Master (Steve)
Grisham the Thirsty (Evil Mike. The dwarf looks like a Santa dwarf)
Ashrian Spiritspeaker, Berserker (Owen)
Avric Albright, Disciple (Ben)
Mike Byrd ran us through a couple of games of Descent 2nd Edition. We had played the first edition many times. We found a lot of things had changed in second edition. For one, the game seemed to move faster, which we liked. One thing we didn’t like was that we hardly got any treasure or items.
Our first scenario was simple. Kill the Ettin leader before too many of his goblin cohorts got off the board. The game starts. Ben goes first and immediately cheats. We love Ben. Part of the fun is catching him doing these cheats that he is hardly aware of. Evil Mike and I take a bunch of damage from goblin archers. We blame Ben and his cheats. Owen gets first blood by killing one of the many, many goblins.
Ben gets riddled with arrows. (There is some justice in the world after all.) Mike’s dwarf is like a tank and keeps the big monsters busy while we chew into the goblins. The big Ettin tried to pick up Evil Mike’s dwarf and throw him. His dwarf was way too strong…or too stubborn, I forget which.
Turn 6. Ben discovers his character has “Reach’. Had his character not had reach, Ben would have tried to use it sooner.
I was able to get the final damage on the big Ettin leader and stop the goblin horde. Yeah, I’m a hero!
Our second game was not so glamorous. We simply had to stop the goblins from destroying some crops. (Is this what heroes do?) To make it more challenging a band of Barghests blocked our way to the fields. We punched a hole in the line of Barghests. Ben tells Owen to run ahead to the crops. Owen listens to Ben and his character goes down under a hail of goblin arrows. (Why did Owen listen to Ben?) Later when the rest of us arrive at Owen’s nearly dead body, Ben heals 2 of the 10 damage. (Go Ben.) My healing potion heals the rest. Owen turns around and takes another fist full of arrows for 8 more damage. Good thing we had Owen to stop all those arrows or one of the rest of us could have been hurt.
Owen recovers his wounds. He and I hold off the remaining goblins while Evil Mike and Ben grab the crops and store the crops for winter. Yeah, we’re farmers!
Mike is going to continue our adventure in two weeks. Looks like we might not stay farmer heroes for long.
Chaos Steve
We sat down and played Legend of Drizzt again. This time we tried adventure #4. Although I can’t tell you the backstory, I can tell you that our destination was a tile containing a Drow glyph. Once that appeared, a random evil villain (probably someone like Mike) would appear.
After only a few rounds we were battling a Drow Duelist (whom we all hate), a Drider, and a Hunting Drake. Ben actually rolled a 20 while battling one of the creatures. This meant he could level up if we had 5 XP in our defeated creature stack. We didn’t. Later in the game, once we had killed a few more creatures, Owen rolled a 20 and his character leveled-up. He was the first to do so in the three games we had played.
We reached the Drow Glyph tile and the evil assassin appeared surrounded by a plethora of creatures. Ben used one of his powers and killed five of the creatures in one blow. Owen’s character finished off the Assassin.
Our second game, Adventure #10, was something quite different. We were trying to escape the catacombs. Instead of drawing event cards we would draw “end†tiles that plugged up the exits on tiles. This game seemed more exciting. At one point we were down to just two available exits. Luckily the next tile we drew had three exits! We continued through the catacombs battling creatures all the way.
We had one exit left when we drew the broken door tile that signaled our way out of the catacombs. We easily fought our way to freedom after that.
Chaos Steve
Some pictures from the game…
 
War Master (Owen): Yes, a great War Master Indeed.
Lambert’s Losers Lt. Dick Dan (Lt. Dan): Our fearless squad leader, Distinguished Service Cross.
Private (E-2) Destry Lambert (Evil Winters): Our commando medic.
Private (E-2) Charlie Winters (Winters): Not sure what he does, Distinguished Service Cross.
Private (E-3) Hector Goldman, Bronze Star
In this journal entry I’ve had to change the names to protect the innocent…or because I couldn’t remember the names…or because I couldn’t spell the names.
Major Stalwart gave us our new orders. We were to infiltrate a French town (Le Pewy) behind enemy lines. Once there our primary objective was to recover a set of secret plans. Our secondary objective was to transport an allied spy back to safety. The spy’s name was Frederick Himmler—codename Pineapple.
Infiltrating behind enemy lines turned out to be a piece of cake. We just parachuted in under the cover of night. Winters and I made perfect landings. After two tries, Lt. Dan also landed, but not perfectly. Lambert missed the landing spot by a bit, but landed safety as well.
Sneaking into the French town turned out to be harder than it looked. Mostly due to the leadership of Lt. Dan who critically failed his stealth roll and stepped on a land mine. He was Shaken by the resulting explosion—the same explosion that alerted the Germans to our presence. That started what would later be called The Dance of the Land Mines. We had to move through the mine field all-the-while being shot at by the Germans. Lambert stepped on a mine too and soaked the resulting wound. I stepped on a mine and soaked the resulting 3 wounds. Yes, I’m that good. Eventually even Winters steps on a mine; just as he was stepping onto the safety of the road.
Later during the firefight, Lt Dan rolled another critical failure throwing a grenade. I took a wound from the blast. Later, in a moment of respite, Lambert healed the wound.
We make it to Frederick’s house just in time to see him being taken away as a German prisoner. After the Germans leave, Winters and Lambert watch to street as Lt. Dan and I search Frederick’s house. We find a cryptic clue:
“if lost drain pineapple”
Lt. Dan orders me to search in the sewer drain behind the house. I was tired from the fight, so I took a break instead. I told Lt. Dan I didn’t find anything. Fortunately the others decide to search the drain in the street in front of the house. Winters critically failed his Agility roll climbing down the ladder into the drain. Then he critically failed his Vigor roll. He falls; landing on his head. Disoriented from the fall he swallows a bunch of sewer crap.
Lt. Dan joins him in the sewer and together they search for a sign from Pineapple. They find a hidden nook with the plans we were looking for. Now we must decide whether to leave with the plans or try to save Frederick.
We’ll miss Frederick.
Lt. Dan signs the papers that put us all in for medals. Lambert gets a citation. Winters gets a Bronze Star and I get a Silver Star.
I heard that we all may be getting transferred to a nice soft job back at the states. If this is true, this will be my last journal entry.
Corporal Goldman. (That’s right, I got a promotion!)
As usual I’m way behind in getting our games updated on the web site. This game actually took place a week ago Wednesday. We played the Dungeons & Dragons: Legend of Drizzt Board Game. It’s a cooperative game for 1-5 players. In it, each player picks a character, a scenario is decided upon, and then you pretty much start playing. I’m simplifying the set up a little, but not by much. There are lots of cards and chits and things to remind the players what powers and abilities their characters have. Play is pretty easy too: players move about the games tiles, sometimes revealing new tiles, sometimes fighting monsters, all the while waiting for the special tile to be revealed that announces the climatic final room.
Here’s how our games went.
Game One Goal: Find the evil assassin and claim the Crown of something or other <insert a suitable cool name for the crown. Let’s call it the Crown of Ultimate Power!>
This first game was a cakewalk for us. The monsters were easily defeated and at no time were we really in trouble.
“Let’s play a harder scenario!†someone said. “Yeah, something with a dragon!â€
Game Two Goal: Find and kill the shadow dragon. Let’s call him Mike—Mike the evil shadow dragon. Not to be confused with Mike, who was playing the game as a player.
Since I went last on during the first game AND I killed the evil assassin—I think his name was Mike—I got to go first. It was disastrous. I ended up drawing double monsters that did damage to everyone. Plus a volcanic vent did damage to everyone. Now everyone was wounded and blaming me. I mentioned how it will all be worth it when we killed Mike, the evil shadow dragon.
Ben went next. A dreaded drow duelist appeared. (One appeared on my turn too.) Now they BOTH get to attack doing even more damage…again…to several characters. Somehow everyone says this is my fault.
On Mike’s turn he kills both drow duelist! And there was much rejoicing.
Later, on another one of my gloriously bad turns, I roll two 1’s in a row (on a d20) trying to kill the drow wizard. In this game, just like in D&D, rolling high is good. Rolling low is not so good. Monster birds attack both Owen and I. This is followed right up by another drow wizard that hits us both again for more wounds. I’m at zero health. This is not good.
Thankfully by my next turn, Owen had healed some of my wounds. So I did what any self-respecting hero would do—I ran. My encounter card was to draw a monster and then I’d be moved to the start tile. We considered canceling it but Mike said he could take on the single monster that would appear by him. My monster card was to draw 2 monster cards. I drew a goblin archer and a huge feral troll! I died on the start tile.
Next turn the dragon tile was drawn. We’re doomed!
The dragon attacked Ben four separate times and missed each time. I can’t explain it either.
During the game, you earn experience points. If you roll a 20 when attacking a monster you level up, but it costs 5 XP. You can also spend XP to cancel encounter cards. After spending untold points to cancel encounters, Owen finally rolls a 20 during a battle (the first 20) but we don’t have enough XP for him to level up.
I had a chance to kill the dragon and be the hero again. I missed the dragon, but I did kill the drider beside him. This gave me a treasure card which was “Fortune Follow Thruâ€. This allowed me to do an automatic wound to the dragon—and kill it! Die Mike, the evil shadow dragon!
Yes, once again I was the hero. I’d like to thank all of the little people, my minions, who helped, in a small way, to make me the hero I am today.
Chaos Steve
