But one day, I think it was day 4 of our 2 weeks of R&R, I woke to the sound of gun fire. Hot damn! I thought. We got us a situation! But it was just Roark taking potshots at the crows. I went out to cheer him on. Those damned crows were cawwing to beat the band. It was like a, like a gorram crow convention! When we came in about 20 minutes later there was talk of a comet.

“I know about comets!” I said. “Are we going to one? Going soon? I hate to say it, but I’m a mite bored.”
Maggie swiveled the screen my way. “There’s a job we could do. Fetchin ice from a comet and takin it to Regina. Gotta go soon though. What ya call time sensitive.” I slapped my thighs as I stood up. “I’ll get my gear.”

Roark rubbed his chin. “Seems fittin somehow.” Prudence looked at him. “How you figure?” He smiled. “Ice to ice, pretty lady! Get it? Ice — diamonds– to ice.”
“Maggie, how far is this Regeena?” The Doc walked in just then. “Oh, are you talking about Regina? Are we going there? It’s pronounced Ra-jai-na, Swei.”
“What? What? Like vagina? That’s just wrong. Who’d live there knowing that?”
“Regina is named after an Earth That Was city in the north. It means queen in Latin. You know Elizabeth Regina…?” The Doc looked at me expectantly.
I shook my head. “I ain’t smart like that, Doc.”

We were out of the lake house in less than an hour. I guess I wasn’t the only one going crazy with the quiet. I heard Miss V talking to the Doc. “It’s not that I don’t enjoy relaxing, Imago. For goodness sake! But think of the people of Regina. They need that ice or things will get grim. We can help our fellow men and shore up our accounts. I won’t deny that this little windfall from the wine delivery is nice, but I’m always putting by for a rainy day.”

With that Maggie at the wheel, we made great time out towards the comet. It’s the Angel Hair comet for the way the tail streams out. It looks lovely and still out the window. I was in the engine room gettin the old girl a cool drink a coolant and I heard Maggie on the comm. “We got company!”

Turns out that a little gal named Mary Celestia was in our little patch of the Black. Well, ain’t that interestin, I muttered. “You need juice, you just say the word there, Maggie.” Next thing I knew, we were zoomin and D-VA was chugging like a race horse smelling victory. I could feel the hull shift beneath my feet as Maggie performed some whatcha call aerobatics. I hit the comm. “Maggie, are you gonna keep this up much longer? I can do some things to ease off the heat build up in the lift mechs, but you got maybe 10 minutes of –” My voice was cut off by Prudence. “Score! Hoo-hoo! They hit an asteroid!” Sure enough out the window I saw the ship.  And the comet hove into view. Miss V’s voice rang through the ship: “We’re landing in a minute, crew. Let’s suit up.”

…..to be continued.

We had to wear our Diva tees. Olivia, as Diva in training, ended up making her own, but it turned out fabulously. Plaid duct tape, who knew?

We gather round and divided into teams. Angel and I paired up. Sarah with Olivia , Michelle (with her ward, Carol) and Tad. Three teams, one objective and an hour to fulfill the mission. Dum-dum-DUM! We got the lists. Lovingly scroll-ized by Taj.

It was a great list. It included hits from our time in Cauldron as well as recent entries from our time in the Black. Legos, flour, Orak’s bathhouse soap, dragons, plot points and rubber duckies….. All that was missing was the Mayor of Cauldron himself!

Sarah pauses for a moment of silence at the site of the burning of the Wee Jas temple.

Because you never know when there’ll be skulks around, I got my bag of flour ready to throw.

Carol successfully bluffs the Home Depot lady by asking for Alpha-Centuri printer paper. W00t!

In an homage to pun-master Tad, Michelle calls lightning.

We had to find a dragon and give candy to a stranger. We combined these on the assumption that this dragon was a stranger to Angel. She looks suitably worried at the prospect.

We had on the list, “D-VA” and since none of us had the actual ship handy, Sarah and Olivia had the most clever idea.

Taj did a wonderful job of listing items we could find in easy distance of Guardian Games. One of these was Jefferson!

Taj set up base camp at Guardian and let the photos roll in!

One of the items was a Lego weapon being used. Angel quickly assembled a Lego hammer and threatened me with it. Scary.

Olivia with her dragon — sweet Hamouk, who saved my bacon more than once.

Handsome Tad with his dragon.

We had to get “5 minis painted all alike.”
Brilliant Angel thought of the lotto pencils at Sheridan Fruit Company.

Sarah gets full marks for composition. She has two unique props –(from left)  a giant mole of science, the death gaze frog and a Lego (her own) using a Lego weapon (not that Imago is any great shakes with a pistol. She’s a doctor not a marksman!).

At game’s end, Taj began the tally process.

We decided to hang out and wait the results…..  It was close. So close that Taj & Jim called in an impartial third judge….. The results:

Me & Angel = 3rd place (sigh)
Sarah and Olivia = 2nd place
Tad, Michelle and Carol = 1st place and all the bragging rights you can eat.

So, what sort of Legos are out there for girl gamers like us? The easy answer is All the Legos! All the Legos are “suitable” for girls. Cue the maniacal laughter.

I realized I’d been looking at the whole Lego thing the wrong way round. The possibilities of Legos in game are endless. I hope we’ll have a chance to test this theory. We’re planning on trying out the Firefly RPG next. And I was thinking How are we gonna handle the minis? I mean with playing Shackled City, it was easy to get minis for the game. With a futuristic, Wild West, space opera, um, where are you going to get minis?

Duh: Legos! A quick look on Google shows me that even I could come up with some sweet props for a Firefly game. So, I guess we can put away the Castle Legos for a while as we explore the universe of Serenity.

Legos Star Wars sets would be the obvious Legos to use for some of the props. Oh, and of course, Indiana Jones! Lucky for this cheapskate there are tons of used cheap Legos out there. It is fun to contemplate a new world to explore. A new gaming engine to learn and new stories to tell. I can’t wait to build my mini!

We debated whether we could afford to pay for a resurrection or what we would do. Taj suggested the spell “reincarnation.” It’s a 7th level Druid spell, cheaper and quicker than “resurrection.” Sounds like Angel is game for it because here’s the catch — who knows what sex or race she’ll be when she comes back. Male gnome? Female half-orc?

It’s nice to have a cohort. Buzz was deployed to clear out some rubble. At every turn he said, “Yes, Miss Indira.” It was really funny.

We turned the corner and ran into a bunch of zombies. The place is crawling with zombies! Stefan’s character was at the other end of the zombie room. He rolled a dwarf Psionic guy. Really cool abilities.

Then, what the hell?!! We’re rolling a listen check? I’m supposed to be sleeping. I have a whole new spellbook prepared! We didn’t know what was going on — I thought Tirel was making a getaway. Instead it’s a bunch of redshirts. No big deal. Dispatched.

And then, well, we were up, so why not get Elvis, who was sitting on the other shore. Deb had Cinder climb up and get the car underway. On the way back with Elvis aboard, damned if the thing didn’t break and fall into the water. What happened next was some of the most tense and difficult combat I have ever witnessed.

Remember last week when Sarah’s paladin sensed evil in the lake? Yeah. We know that evil by name now. We call her “Nessie.” Deb found herself doing repeated grapple checks against this huge sea monster. Most of us were stuck on shore, helpless. Cinder kept on taking damage and then the monster moved to the very edge of the map with Cinder in tow. What the hell to do now? I think all of us thought Cinder would die.

There were times where I felt like I couldn’t breathe. As Debbie said later: “When Angel starts to worry, that’s when I really start to worry.” I love our team. We threw ourselves into saving Cinder, no questions. As we slowly got closer to the sea monster, all I could think about was healing Cinder. (Am I the only one who forgot about the healing potions Cinder looted?) I had so few spells because we hadn’t rested. I know Sarah and Taj were in the same boat.

The sea monster seemed unstoppable. We hit it with lots of spells and weapons and it kept on grappling. The longer the battle, the more I thought that maybe it wouldn’t just be Deb rolling a new character. I had a fleeting thought that Indira wouldn’t get to level 6 after all.

Then we got a few lucky breaks. A few bad rolls for Michelle (earlier I had offered to switch dice with her, to help those bad rolls along!), and a few good rolls for us. Suddenly things were looking up! After what seemed like hours (but Michelle told us was only one minute in game time), we were rowing back to shore, sea monster vanquished.

When it came time for XP, I was surprised — we barely got any at all! Sure, we had fought just a few things: red-shirt Alleybashers and a sea monster…… on paper the 350 or so in XP looked fine. But I felt like I’d been through that battle for real. At the end of the night I was spent, physically and emotionally spent.

But that’s the sign of a great game, I guess, when you are that invested. So what does “experience” matter compared to the real life experience of the night’s adventures?