Let me tell you a little about our midweek Dungeons & Dragons game today. I personally love hearing different people’s tabletop stories and I’m so excited after this week’s game that I wanted to share a little of that delight. First I should introduce our party, I suppose!

The Final Lesson has been together for more than a year now and is led by our magnificent dungeon master Chris, aka Wolfyseyes. He does an amazing job of laying out the world and bringing it all to life with stories and characters and setting. Love him. The party itself is:

• Rhys, our Human Paladin of the Tritherion Order with an axe to grind, played by my husband Dan.
• Darvin, the Human Ranger with the luck of Wil Wheaton and a little fae companion helping him on his way through our mad little adventure, played by Wolfy’s husband Jamie.
• Garr, our resident Dwarven idiot Barbarian with a weakness for shitty booze who sleeps in cupboards, played by my sweetheart brother-in-law Matty.
• Safia, the Half-Elven Wizard with the little owl familiar, Nugget, who is a cheerful, silly book-loving so-and-so that just so happens to lay a damn good Fireball, played by me! She is the Elf you may have seen in my various avatars (thanks to Rune for the aart) and I love her to pieces.

Thus far, we have uncovered an artifact of immense and terrible power which has the potential to unleash the twisted dragon Sutho upon the world of Prennonor, currently locked away in the Shadowfell. We’re trying to find out how we can dispose of this artifact, whether that be to destroy it or seal it away for good, all while attempting to take down the cultists working towards this task. We’ve talked down ghosts and one Spectator (I still don’t quite believe that worked), used a Dwarf as a battering ram, overthrown not one but two town mayors, dealt with more mystical cats than you might imagine, thrown a corpse at a group of bandits to knock them prone before burning them alive, and seen some amazing and terrible things together. By now we’re pretty well bonded, but something fell in our path (quite literally) this week that made all of us leap for joy. Incoming gif featuring accurate representation of The Final Lesson this Wednesday.

You see, when we started playing D&D together we were to have a fifth party member, but you know how life happens and all that fun stuff. We’ve always told this person that their space at the proverbial table is very much open as we love their face and as tough as it might be to start at level 7, we’re a little more experienced now and will happily help them through this. I think we’d all resigned ourselves to this never happening so you can imagine our joy when heading back to Safia’s father’s place after a long day of shopping, convincing miserable shop assistants to follow their dreams, and .. mud wrestling? When from a nearby tree, an adorable little Fawn fell at our feet. It’s Rinike, of course it is Rinike!

These motherfluffers spent a MONTH plotting this surprise introduction of Taleigha to The Final Lesson, a shy little Fawn creature, and boy were they successful. I love those sneaky sods, you guys. And I can’t wait to introduce Rini to our little world of D&D proper in the coming weeks.

Stuff like this is why I love Dungeons & Dragons so much. I’m still a relative newbie to the game, and to roleplaying in general, so I certainly make mistakes but those amazing moments you have with your friends, those are the reason I play. These moments become genuine memories and bonding sessions and heck, I love them so much I started running my own game every other weekend to allow myself to craft the world and the stories I wanna see and let my own players have these amazing moments and adventures. Also just to play more because I’m hooked.

Rini will be starting a year into our campaign as a Druid among a level 7 party, so we’ll be doing our best to make her feel comfortable, welcome, and as much a part of the group as any of us. We love her so muuuuch. If you have any tips for us, either for newbies starting in an already established party or for the party itself in helping new folk get involved and be a part of the fun and making their own in-jokes with the group, please please leave a comment below! We can’t wait to play more with our new companion.