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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6220142" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 344: June 2006part 4/6Another evening with the wizards three: Another rather interesting returnee to mark their 30th anniversary here. It's been 8 years since Elminster, Mordenkainen and Rauthene last met up for our entertainment. In that time, Greyhawk has been revived and died again, the Realms has undergone a complete retroactive cosmology shift, and Mordenkainen has lost most of his hair and had a major makeover. But they're still an immature bunch who seem to be primarily here for the food and the cheap laughs at each other's expense. It's rather like going through a time warp when you contrast it with the tone of most recent articles. And indeed, they pick up where they left off, asking about the fate of Dalamar. Which since Krynn has got it's magic back now and a new 3e gameline, really should be a soluble problem, but ho hum. Still, it's better than the last instalment, even if it isn't as good as the classic first few. Overall, it's pretty welcome.  The new spells are all combat ones. Battle Tentacles is a relative of Evard's black tentacles, with the benefit that the caster can ignore them. Fireball has had variants like this several times, why shouldn't other spells. In fact, it really ought to be a template. Raising the level by 1 to remove the possibility of the caster being harmed or impeded by their own spells seems a good trade to me.  Mailed Might lets you animate suits of armour, and have them explode when beaten. He's already pulled that trick with zombies, but giving your creations a sting in the tail does seem like the kind of thing a villain would relish doing. Particularly a load bearing boss. Wyrmcone is a pretty decent AoE blasty spell who's energy type varies on what type of dragon scale is used to power it. Course, getting dragon scales has it's difficulties, but those are surmountable with a little negotiation or a lot of violence. Hey, more plot hooks. The voyage of the princess ark: God. Now this is another blast from the past and then some. 14 years after it ended, Bruce Heard brings the Ark back for one more flight. We rejoin Haldemar 6 months after the last instalment. He's returned to Alphatia with the Ark, and since then has simply been kicking his heels, being told to do nothing by the Empress. But this boredom is not to last, as the opposing factions make their move. The Ark is captured. Haldemar gets knocked out (man, it really is just like old times. ) and they have to do some sneaky stuff to find out what the hell is going on. Is the empress a traitor to the entire nation?! Or is she only taking the best of many bad options. In any case, it would be best if they set forth again, traveling new lands, and making sure they're as far away from Alphatia as possible when the <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> goes down. Which is of course an invitation for the whole series to start up again, and I get the impression that Bruce would be very happy to oblige if asked to make this a recurring feature again. Alas, it is not to be. In contrast to the original format, where all the OOC stuff was put at the end, this time, it's scattered in sidebars throughout the story. A lot of this is simply recaps of info about the original cast, setting and adventures, as obviously they have to keep the article comprehensible to people who never read the previous instalments. And if the timeline issues seemed awkward at the end of the last instalment, they're even more so now, after the massive change in setting, all the stuff that happened during the AD&D era, and then a good decade of the setting lying fallow. But they do find the space to slip in one new magical item, a cool variant on the potion of disguise. Still, it's been great to see this old girl get an airing again. Will we ever see Mystara return officially? Probably not, they have enough generic fantasy settings. But as long as people still have the old boxed sets and Cyclopedia and play with them, it'll never really die.</blockquote>

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