Thirty-Ninth Session - MORTAL KOMBAT!!!! We go with Ned to an occult island where wizards gather to fight it out one-on-one tournament style. Ned blows a magic horn and some robots sail us out to the recently risen island-town of Dagon, inhabited largely by giant bug people. There are six other wizards with their retinues in attendance. There's a lot of rules like "non-wizards can get killed by wizards with impunity" and "the bugs will obey wizards but probably eat you."

Thirty-Eighth Session - We save some witches from a giant centipede, and try to hook Ned up with the least gruesome of the witches, but we are on a timetable - apparently a timetable to be eaten by moth-bats. We go to a Secret Cave - I think the goal was for Hemp to get an Aphiel patron bond. Besides the usual weird critters, we find out about some warring long-ago folks from the ghost of a little boy named Tammun.

Thirty-Seventh Session - It's a tie as to what's the most dangerous experience this session - tentacle-birthed monstrous servitors of a dark god, or Ned setting our campsite on fire - twice. We travel through weird random encounters and Ned setting our campsite on fire. At long last we get to the Shrine of the Bethines where Podrick needs to cleanse the Helm of Chistu, which is supposed to be all kinds of help against the evil undead hordes.

Thirty-Sixth Session - We head from Kingspire to Wymoor and meet some bewitched goons we manage not to murder, and then some other goons we do murder. We take our large retinue on the road. The first night, we meet the artifact hunters on the road that we were sure were going to just waylay us last time we met them.

Thirty-Fifth Session - It's back into the caves below the Magnusson crypt to best the Silver Skull! This is made more complicated by the characters still being body-swapped - but the dice are on our side and the Silver Skull generally loses his spells. With a final acrobatic flourish we dump the skull into Hell and the place tumbles down. Huzzah!

Thirty-Fourth Session - Adventurers, slugs, and undead, oh my! We go to rescue a kidnapped woman from the clutches of demons! And do, kinda sorta. The party is well and truly jacked up, besides being soul-swapped folks are poisoned, injured... Luckily I missed last session, so Hemp shows up hale and hearty and looks after his twisted brood as we try to heal up for a couple days.

Thirty-Third Session - We continue to spelunk a somewhat-aquatic tower full of lamprey men and sharks and suchlike. We find some weird jellyfish suits that promise to let us enter the water, but there's clearly a big hammerhead shark in there. We start putting together a plan to bait and kill the shark when Gallfred Weasel goes bananas and just jumps in and starts stabbing the shark.

Thirty-Second Session - The seas beckon as we leave Kingspire for the Isle of Lone Ait, which looks foreboding even on the map. Foes await! First, we have a quite lively fight with some seafaring skeletons. "Eight skeletons on a boat? No problem, let's get them. AIIIIEEEEEE it hurts" is a good summary of what we said. And then we start in on some adventure about weirdly named people (Shadankin!

Thirty-first Session - We head back into the Kingspire. The weaselly Vizier tries to get the runeblade off of us, so I shoot him in his face for his trouble. Unfortunately two elder kith knights cut down Ned. We manage to save his life, but at the cost of permanent disability (-1 STA and a scar). We kill them all and heft mithril weapons meaningfully.

Thirtieth Session - We go find the other elves out of time that should be against the ones in the castle, but they require slaughter as well, so we oblige. Then we find a Conan the Barbarian style dead guy and, like Conan, take his sword and armor. When we go outside we have a Tremors type problem with a big worm.

The last day of the fest. Fatigue has set in. You've seen most of the films so you start picking random stuff out of the schedule. Angel's Egg - A restored 1984 anime by Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell) and illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano (Vampire Hunter D). Cryptic, weird, haunting. A little girl (?) tends a large egg in an abandoned world and meets a mysterious soldier (?).

A week in but we're still not done! It starts hurting a bit at this point. But, you know, a good hurt. Let's dispense with the first two quickly, as they were both forgettable. V/H/S Halloween - A collection of “found footage” ultra low budget shorts. They can all be summed up as "something to do with a shakycam and all your haunted house props in the off season." Vaguely amusing, mostly snoozing.

This morning in the first slot they were also running some D&D! How could I resist. Courtesy of the nice folks at Tiny Minotaur, they ran a Dungeon in a Box adventure where we all ended up taking over mecha to fight a giant bug. I played Scylla the bronze dragonborn Circle of the Sea druid. I had a fun group, the other players were a guy and his dad both of who come to the fest, and two lovely ladies on their honeymoon.

The second half of the festival arrives! Some of the glitterati bail after the weekend, they even sell a "second half" badge, and many of the movies get shown in the first and second halves. Before the first film of the day, I quickly went to the spooky book sale or whatever they called it, focusing on Texas horror authors, where I picked up three - "The Legend of Charlie Fish" by Josh Rountree (

Sunday at the festival starts off slow, as Friday and Satrday nights are full of fun. I considered seeing Holy Boy in the first slot, but decided on a roundup of Indian shorts billed as "Fantastic India!" instead. Really more general SE Asian. I have learned to skip the shorts programming in general after several years of it just being a "how gross can we be" competition but there have been really interesting Indian movies the last two years so I thought I'd hit Indian shorts to get a smorgasboard.

It's a fine Saturday morning and the big weekend of the fest is here. They start a silent auction for parts of the diorama they used to film the "spooky church" trailer for the fest, which is cool - I'd love the big stained glass piece to put in my window but the bids immediately hit $500 and Lord only knows what they got to eventually.

The first full day of the fest, which means five movies! The first slot is usually around 11 AM, then 2 PM, then 5 PM, then 8 PM, then 11 PM. Then you stagger home at 2 AM, sleep, be in front of the computer to reserve your next day's tickets at 10 AM sharp, and jump in the car to come back and do it again!

The first day is a partial one - an opening night party and big premiere on Thursday night. The Highball, the bar connected to the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar that hosts the festival, was all Dungeons & Dragons decorated - they even had a dragon head set up atop the building outside like the Godzilla head in Shinjuku! Cosplayers in Renfaire garb filled the venue (advertising a "

I took a week off and went to my favorite Austin film festival, Fantastic Fest! It's the 20th year of this genre (fantasy, horror, science fiction, action, and cult) film festival started back in 2005. The movies range from the ultra weird obscure foreign films to the breakthrough hits (Zombieland, John Wick, The Babadook, and Smile for example). I started going in 2009 with fellow gamer Chris and have attended on and off since (2009, 2010, 2011, 2015, the online-only 2020, 2023, 2024, and 2025).

Twenty-ninth Session - And now - weird elves out of time!!! My research indicates that Old Man Fish's desire for darkvision let us into DCC 88.5, Curse of the Kingspire! Things get weird quick, both camping near the ruins of the Kingspire and then as we approach it (leaving our 8 companions and horses at camp) ghostly figures surround us. And as we approach the tower we are suddenly part of a ghostly ancient battle between hordes of beast-men and a castle full of Kith!