Today’s D&D session was awesome.

We went on a raid on a bandit camp, the leader of which was possessed by an evil artifact that turned him into a werewolf, who was holding a pack of clerics hostage. Probably because I just saw “300,” my paladin’s plan of attack was to make a speech, complete with dramatic sword pointing. Possibly because he has an absurdly high Bluff skill and 18 Charisma, this actually worked. The bandits backed off, and we fought their leader without interference until near the end, when our bard’s frantic strumming finally wore off and it occurred to them that maybe they ought to get involved or something.

To our horror, our faithful dog, Dog, went in for the attack on the werewolf, botched badly, and was smacked down hard. There was much Shatner-esque screaming, gasps of horror from all members of the party, and the paladin went sort of apeshit. (He is very fond of the dog. Nobody touches the dog.) This worked fabulously once, and then I botched the second roll, and took a werewolf bite to the face, to which the paladin responded, as one might:

“Hmm, did I just take a werewolf bite to the face?”

“Sure looks that way.”

It is possible that might be a problem later, since I don’t get that total immunity to disease until 3rd level.

Our cleric managed to deliver the coup de grace, and the paladin picked up the dog, stomped into the tiger cage full of clerics, and demanded they heal his dog. This is probably not how they expected to be rescued, but we really like Dog.

The situation was made weirder by the fact that my paladin got a magic sword at character creation which, like many of our GM’s gifts, is double-edged. This one’s +1, but +3 vs. shapechangers. And once it tasted shapechanger blood, it started talking to the paladin.

This is almost never a good sign, particularly when it’s whispering about blood and killing, and there’s a few other problems as well. But I must say, I did particularly like “sss… filthy, treacherous morphological nightmares.. defiers of the laws of conservation of mass! KILL THEM ALL…”

The other members of the party don’t know this yet (although their players will once they read this!). Possibly the paladin will avoid mentioning it. (Hey, it’s not EVIL, if they asked directly “Dude, is your sword whispering to you about killing shapechangers?” he’d tell the truth. It just…doesn’t really need to be mentioned until then, right? Right.)

Of course, if that werewolf bite did do something…well, he just better not cut himself shaving is all.