Famous Last Words

I guess it is part and parcel of AD&D but sooner or later the player characters are going to say or do something REALLY dumb which will result in deaths occuring and nine times out of ten it will be the PC(s) that bite the dust. Over the years our group, like most if not all others, has had more than it's fair share of famous last words. The end result has always been (at least from the point of view of the DM) rather amusing. Here are some of the ones I've remembered, there were of course many others that went without being recorded.

Enjoy

"Time to die kobolds"-Dawn Darkwater (Jason)
Dawn & Leah are in the Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl. They come across 5 kobolds (polymorphed ogre magi) who beg for their lives. Dawn, being the big brave paladin that he is, threatens them and the kobolds flee with the paladin in hot pursuit. Eventually he corners them in a dead end room. After gloating about their imminent death he is killed by their cone of cold's.

"Let's go through the forest, it will be quicker."
Garth & Terry are discussing which way will be best to get home, they are both injured and out of spells. After their chgaracters are killed by a giant sundew Terry asks Garth: "what was the name of that forest again?"
"The Dark Wood."

"I'll swim across the lake and get a boat"- Phyphor (Garth)
The party is exploring a ruined keep. They find themselves on the shore of a subterranean lake. He started to swim and quickly became lacedon bait.

"Wank"
The party has been captured by yaun ti in the Forbidden City and are about to be sacrificed to the yaun ti's dark god. There has been much antagonism between Mark and Jason throughout the adventure. As they are about be to sacrificed Jason's cleric tries one last spell...
Jason: "I cast a command spell... at Nikon (Mark's character)... wank!"

"We go north"- Caradin Stormdale
Caradin and Thud are in the Le Fay Marsh deciding which way to go. An argument developed, and then a fight. Dawn comes to Thud's aid and together they slay Caradin.
Moral of the story: never argue with your brother when he's playing two characters and you only have one!
Or as the DM at the time (Ian) put it: "The worst case of stubborn brothers I have ever seen. I don't know why I didn't just kill you all at this point and start again with a new campaign."

"Okay, it's my turn to hit"- Aldor (Ian)
The Wolfsheads are fleeing from the dungeons beneath the temple of the Black Hand in Zentil Keep but a patrol tries to stop them. In the battle Aldor engages a guard captain and the fight lasts several rounds but the guard is badly mauled (1hp remaining) when Aldor mkes his quip then rolls a 1 and fumbles (badly)- critically hit self- triple damage- 57 hp- he dies.

"Okay everyone, give me all your magic items and I'll challenge the death knight... One hit from the mace of disruption and he's history"- Druthnar (Craig-me)
The Silver Blades are in the ruined city of Ruanon. They have fought there way into the Lich's Court but the way is barred by a death knight. Druthnar fought (for all of about 30 seconds). He lost initiative, failed his save vs the death knights sword which had some nasty paralysation affect, and the party lost all their magic items.

A few minutes earlier...

Trying to negotiate with the same death knight in the ruins of Ruanon. Just before the above battle this little dialogue ocurs:
Druthnar: "Okay I bet my soul"
Death Knight:"Who's soul?" Druthnar pointing to the PC beside him:
"His!"
Try explaining to a death knight that you were only kidding!

"He stole it."
"No he stole it"
Two thieves are caught red handed trying to divide the treasure the plundered from the tomb of a long dead paladin. The parties paladin confronts them and the thieves try to blame each other. The paladin (Fiona) gets upset and kills herself by sticking two daggers in her ears (Fiona couldn't handle being paladin or the argument). The rest of the party turns on the thieves. Jason (playing one of the thieves) shuts up, Garth (playing the other) tries to argue his way out of it... but the party want blood and settle for his.
Moral of the story sometimes its better to keep your mouth shut.

"Let's use our water-skins as air bags and explore this level."
Said by the Sea Ghosts who have just discovered an flooded level in a sahuagin fortress. Try fighting under water without a means to breathe! (But hey, it worked in module A4!)

"I attack the bar maid" (Craig)
Our first attempt at playing evil characters. The campaign started in a tavern (don't they all) where the party are introducing themselves to each other. The bar keep (her father) comes to the barmaid's rescue and a fight develops. The watch are called, the party fights and loses- badly. They are imprisoned, tried and executed. Total time elapsed: 30 minutes (The worlds shortest campaign?). So who's turn to DM?

"I break the magic items." Said by Thud the Barbarian.
After destroying the potions and other goodies we'd fought so hard for in a Chimera lair we tied him up by his ankles from a handy stalactite and cut off his ears. In future whenever he mentioned destroying magic we just pulled out his now green and mouldy ears and he quickly lost interest in the magic.

"I'll polymorph you into a red dragon and you can flame the pirate ship" -Kylas the mage. Murwood failed his save vs system shock and died on the ships deck. Oops.

"I follow the smell."
Craig's ranger makes his save against a strange, fragrant smell but decides to investigate anyway. The rest of the party find the corpse- victim of a Mantrap.

"What do you mean I have to do penance?"
The adventurers are in the city of Galach in Candalfeor. Mark's cleric wanders down amongst the poor quarters and meets up with cultists from several religions.
Mark: "Pagans. I try to convert them all"
DM (Ian): "Okay." (Two minutes later) The crowd aren't too receptive, they are getting angry, hurling abuse and threatening you. It's about to turn ugly."
Mark: "In that case I pull out my scroll and cast a blade barrier."
Later: (After killing many people and fleeing the scene): "What do you mean I have to do penance?"

"Bugger off!"- Same cleric (Mark's).
The party are travelling through the Doom Marsh when they are captured by minions of the demon lord Kochie The Undying. They are ordered to grovel at the demon's feet. Mark's response is noted above. He then had his innards removed and stored in a special magical container but the rather annoyed demon- he never was the same after that...

"I don't have to roll for my ressurection roll, I've an 18 constitution." (Mark)
Needless to say we made him roll stating that if he rolled "00" he failed. He of course then rolled "00" and had to make up a new character. "That'll learn ya!"

"I leap over the wall" -Thud.
Party is about to attack a tree full of harpies in an overgrown garden. Thud the (1st edition) Barbarian leaps over the wall and is attacked by 4 owlbears. He takes 80 hp in the round and leaps back over the wall to safety- with about 5hp remaining..

"A vampire attacks you from behind" -DM (Ian)
Unfortunately, the vampire attacked Thud the Barbarian from behind. Using his sixth sense ability to detect back attacks he sensed the vampire, whirled round and slew him before the vampire knew what hit him.

"Hades...Hades...Hades...Hades...etc."- Caradin Stormdale
The party is in the Demons Crown on a mission to save the kingdom (of course). They have a powerful magical item which will imprison the demon lord Hades. To save time (and avoid the perils of Tartarus) Caradin decides to call the demon lord to the party and carries on until Hades hears and appears. Hades appears, destroys the artefact (unknown to the party it was only affective in Tartarus), and then disappears. Damn!

"I charge across the room" -Chance Shannow
Same fight with Hades. It took the cavalier 5 rounds to charge across a 100' room to engage the demon. Each round the DM asked "What are you doing?"
"I'm still charging across the room."

"Need More Guards"- Valdamer the Mage(in his pre-vampire days)
The party has just ransacked a nobles villa, killing several guards. Valdamer left the above message (written in blood) pinned to the body ( by a dagger of course) of one of the guards. (We always did take being evil to extremes...)

The Wolfsheads have recently "liberated" the cloud castle. A force of giants tries to reclaim it. The Wolfsheads stand on the battlements and parlay with the giants.
Aldor: "This castle is ours, we will not give it back without a fight."
Gilfronden: "Yeah!"
Giant: "And who might you be."
Aldor: "I am Gilfronden Elendyl, who are you?"
Gilfronden: "WHAT!....Aldor you bastard!"

The Wolfsheads have returned to the lair of Vesciant (From Dungeon #16)and are trying to recover the loot that they dumped in the lake.
Aldor: "Shamahl cast water-breathing on Gilfronden and Murwood then they can go and find the treasure."
Gilfronden: "Why don't you come?"
Aldor: "I'm a cleric, blunt weapons aren't any good underwater"
Gilfronden: "Okay"
Later after those sent on the rrecovery mission are almost killed by scrags Aldor rescues them using his flametongue long sword to drive the scrags back into the deeps!

The Dark Lords: Valdamer (Craig) has been turned into a vampire so the party drives a stake through his heart and bury him. Craig (OCC): "I promise I won't try to escape or attack the party."
Eventually the party agrees to his requests and remove the stake. Valdamer immediately flees and heads back to Ravenloft with the PCs in hot pursuit.

Two of the Dark Lords Virinian (Ian) and Talon (Craig) return to Berdusk after looting part of Ruanon. They hire a local driver to take their loot into town and then Talon polymorphs the driver into a troll and helps the local guards kill "the beast".

The Dark Lords are fighting the evil vampire Lord Stroud in the sewers beneath Irieabor.
Aspen: "I take a called shot at his heart with my sharpened arrow" (stake) He rolls a 20 and does a critical. Thus ends the unlife of Lord Stroud.

The Wolfsheads are hired to destroy a dragon. They locate the beasts lair without incident and are deciding what to do.

Aldor: "hang on a minute there must be more to it than this...you just don't walk up and bash a dragon".
They then proceeded to explore all possibilities: its an illusion, it is only a baby dragon... the mother must be about and she will attack us, etc. Eventually they decide to attack anyway so Peregrin creeps forward and attempts to sneak around the beast- unfortunately the dragon was awake and flames him (and the others).
They attack. What they didn't realise that the githyanki behind them have had quite a while to plan an ambush and attack from the rear.

Ian's high-tech Palladium Campaign:
"I'll leap onto the running board of the truck and fire at the goblins" - Josey Wales
The party has set up an ambush for a humanoid caravan. They are spread around the perimeter of the ambush site and they have positioned several booby traps. The ambush begins well but the humanoids fight back and Terry gets the truck as back up. Josey fails his attempt to catch the speeding vehicle and and is run over by it!

Same as above.

"What! they're surrendering. Kill them all." Steve (Priest of Light).

The party has just defeated a large force of humanoids and demons. The remaining humanoids are raising their hands to surrender:

"The worm has turned" - (said by Garth's last character when a demon worm spun around and bit his ear off).

"Sure I can remove the curse. But you've got to attend one of my services." - (said by Virinian an EVIL cleric to one of Terry's characters who was then introduced to the 'closet of death').

"You open the door, I'll back you up." - (Aldor to Gilfronden - on more than one occasion)

"I'm just a magic-user, you guys go first." - (Valentine to the party - on more than one occasion).
Valentine just happened to be an ex-fighter with more hps than the rest of the party combined!

"I open the door."

While exploring the Caves of Time in the Egg of the Phoenix module my character opens the door to a room shortly after the party has slain a hell hound (unfortunately the noise of combat alerted it's masters). The door opens and the party is hit by 3 cone of colds from three ogre magi standing behind it. Everybody dies! Even those that make their saves. We are all stunned as it is the first time ever that a whole party has been taken out by a single attack. Nasty!

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