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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 3247405" data-attributes="member: 32740">Second Edition game, Spelljammer & FR.  Party is investigating a site in Kara-Tura.  It's a tower.  We disembark and send our ship, the Red October, up into low orbit out of harms way (only because experienced crew was hard to come by should they get eaten by some low-level nasty that wouldn't give US a moments pause).Entering the tower, the front door leads to a tall open room on the first level, only a stair winding up the wall to the second floor.  In the middle of the ceiling is a round hole with some sort of watery, shiny illusion over it to prevent seeing through to the second floor.  A blue dragon (as I recall) sticks it's head through the hole from above and breathes just after my swashbuckler uses his boots of striding and springing to leap from the door to the top of the stair to go attack it.Standing IN the door is our dwarven cleric.  About a year before (in real time!) his character had come into ownership of a +1 arquebus.  Now my swashbuckler was the only other PC to use firearms and this was the only magical firearm we'd ever seen as treasure (I had to have my magical arquebus's made for me.)  This weapon was worth ENORMOUS amounts of money.  Naturally, the cleric had obtained a small keg of powder to go with it - 100 charges.  He'd never fired it.  NOT ONCE.Standing NEXT to the dwarven cleric is a human myrmidon (2E paladin wannabe).  This character owns a Necklace of Fireballs, only ONE bead of which has ever been used.  You can see where this is going...The myrmidon fails his save against the lightning - for that matter I seem to recall NOBODY made a save against the lightning except myself and the party mage just outside the door who wasn't in the area of effect.  4 other characters take max damage from a huge, ancient blue dragon.  The ITEMS everyone is carrying, however, manage to make their saves vs. electricity - including the powderkeg which really has the dwarf worried as soon as he come to it on the list of things to save for.  The necklace fails its save against the lightning as well.  Of course NOTHING fails all the saves against the fireballs - including the powderkeg, which ALSO blows up.The crew of the Red October, watching from thousands of feet above see a bright white-orange bloom on the world below and say, "What the ()#$*% was that?!"  They descend carefully to find the entire party dead and blown several hundred feet back, the top blown off the tower, and a large dragon corpse - with no face except for raised (as if in surprise) eyebrows - right in the middle of the smoking ruin.  Magical weapons of all kinds were recognizeable but melted, charred, de-magicked and useless.  And on the body of the dwarf cleric was a slightly dusty but quite intact magical arquebus.After the corspes were returned home and all the Raise Deads and such were taken care of the Dwarf cleric took up his arquebus.  He walked to the crest of an exceptionally high, forlorn oceanside cliff and chucked the arquebus into the sea.  Then he walked home.</blockquote>

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