The Viking episode had the intervention of the Gods. Our true and righteous group of Vikings had to fight out antithesis Greek heroes. With the gods watching the outcome to see which Pantheon was the better.

It started out with us walking in Ithica and running into a large group Greeks. In the back there were a couple of Priests with what appeared to be a location finder for Vikings. It has an arrow on a dias like a compass pointing right at us. Before running away I decided to get rid of it and cast Dispel Magic on it. Ray said later that he wasn't expecting that. The thing was a basic locate objects with hides as the object since Vikings wear hides. He wanted to use it to chase us around for a while. I ruined that element for him but he still had us on the run until the gods intervened and expressed their displeasure at this avoidance of fighting and that we had to fight the Greek Heroes. So I said "Well take us there" and they did.

I don't remember much about Louie's fight other than he won. Bob and Nelson took care of theirs. Nelson's Dwarf was lamenting that all he wanted to do was be a cook. He blurred himself then blinded his opponent who then rode off when ganged up on by Bob and Nelson.

Rudy had a good fight. He found himself a chariot and traded javelins with his opponent on horseback. He eventually knocked him off him horse by leaping off the chariot in his Polar Bear form. He was down in negative numbers when he was able to get the guy in a bear hug. He was able to squeeze for three before he had to change back to human to recover his hit points to stay alive. That was long enough to crush the life out the guy. Then the Greek gods cheated. Hermes showed up and turn the hero into a Gorgon, so Rudy had to fight again. (There was a 25% chance that the Greek gods would resurrect a hero). Rudy was able to defeat that incantation by again turning into a bear and getting the gorgon in a bear hug. Fortunately Rudy saved against the breath weapon.

At that point the score was Vikings 4, Greeks 0. The guy that ran away counts as a victory.

I got to face a hero priest of Athena. Ray warned us that we had a feeling of an impending storm. I cast Bless, Payer, Protection from Fire in preparation and drank a Potion of Invulnerability. The Greek Hero showed up and we stopped apart from each other the distance of a Flame Strike spell. The first round we tossed spells. The Greek tossed...Flame Strike. The damage was absorbed by my protection.

Figuring that the Priest had the same spells as me. The time to cast a bunch before hand, I figured that my flame strike would have not effect. So I cast Dispel Magic. This caught Ray completely off guard. He hadn't thought of it. Just to be safe. Since it didn't take away all the Protection spells, I cast Dispel Magic twice more just to be sure. Ray tried to copy me by doing the same thing by my spells went off first and ruined his.

The fourth round Ray said that our gods were of skill and combat and weren't too happy about us throwing spells. It wasn't enough to make me think about stopping so on the fourth round I cast finally Flame Strike for a measly 17 points. Ray said it singed him a little bit. I didn't interpret the reference correctly and thought perhaps the Protection from fire was still up. For the fifth round I again prepared to cast Flame Strike.

Unfortunately I lost initiative and the Greek charged and struck me with his spear using three extra charges for damage. I took 24 hit points of damage. Ouchy mamma! The next round he used two charges and did 18 points. He had an incredibly low AC and it took a 16 for me to hit the bastard. Fortunately I did hit him a couple of times. I decided not to use the shield and went fighting two handed. He hit me eight times in a row. Doing less damage each time but still I dropped to -6 and Ray was looking up some special ability of the 'Sword of Sif" that burns Constitution for Hit Points when you go negative.

At that point I thought I was serious meat. Ray then realized that he had made a mistake. Since he had used up all the magic charges in the spear, it no longer was magical and the +2 damage should not have been applied. So I got back some hit points that put me back in the plus column. I got another strike in and then Ray realized that he had forgotten another ability of the sword. It causes wounding to Priests of opposing gods. I hadn't know about that. I thought that only applied to Giants. So after that calculation for the wounding damage the Greek Hero was dead.

Then Ray realized that since he used all the charges in the spear it was no longer magical and that meant that he couldn't have hurt me at all since I had used the Potion of Invulnerabilty which protected me from all damage from non-magical weapons. He was pretty mad at himself for messing up the battle. There were only three rounds that he could have hurt me with the spear. The other five it should have had not effect and the Greek didn't have another magical weapon.

After the battle I immediately took the Greek Shield and Spear and sacrificed them to Sif. Which was a good move since that made her grant another special ability to my sword. The Greek had +3 Bronze Plate and a +3 Shield of Athena. Along with his high Dex, he was hard to hit. Athena took away the magic of the shield but I did get to keep the bronze plate.

Snogabaek in now 11th level so he can now create magical items. Ray said that he is the first character in his campaigns that can do so. So Snogabeak is taking some time off to go back to the Monestary and create an item or two. I have Toms' broken Dragon Tooth Sword to fix.

The rest of the group gathered up the remaining Vikings in the city (mostly from Clan Wolverine) got a bunch of boats and left to find the other members the oracle said we needed to fight Raf.