The Steel Hearts

Every other Wednesday, the Doll-house is filled up by the "nerd party", that group of individuals who come over bi-weekly to play a modular D&D game.

I was thinking back to how long we've been playing this module series and was shocked to realize it's been a few years.

It's a bit different from my once-a-month Kortoe group who is no more. Instead of the Dungeon Master (DM) creating their own story, plot, NPC's, bad guys, treasure, etc, we're playing pre-made adventures published by Wizards of the Coast (the company that owns the D&D brand).

Our typical night starts out with players arriving sporadically until everyone is finally there. I usually feed them as I know that D&D should not be done on an empty stomach. By the time we get to the business of playing, it's usually eight o'clock or even later, as with all D&D games in my experience, there's some settling down to do and some socializing to get out of the way first.

Luckily D&D players are typically night owls!

Because we play a pre-built game, there is typically a combat session every night. Combat means that we must bust out the combat grid, a flexible roll of plastic that is covered in 1-inch squares and allows you to draw on it with wet erase markers so you know where you can step and where you'll run into a wall.

To further facilitate the imagination, we use miniatures to plot out movements during combat. They help us to remember who is where and how far you can move during each round.

One member of our group is into minature painting, that art of taking the tiniest brushes you can find and painting one-inch tall pewter figurines with lifelike colors.

This member, who became nicknamed 1T for the insistent way he introduces himself ("My name is spelled with one T!") is as meticulously anal about his art as he is about playing D&D RAW (Rules As Written).

(We call those people "rules-lawyers" and while they have their place, they can also be supremely annoying.)

But I'm getting off track. 1T had purchased miniatures matching as closely as he was able to our self-described characters, and then took it upon himself to paint them so that we would have faithful representations of ourselves whenever the combat board was pulled out.

Behold below, the fearsome figures of the Steel Hearts, adventurers and treasure-seekers extraordinare.


These are pictures of Xander, our faithful fighter (played by 1T himself). All of the figures below are roughly 1.5-1 inch tall, so keep this mind when looking at the exterme detail he put into painting these figurines. I guess being OCD can come in handy...

This shield is truly a work of art. Too bad Xander constantly throws it

and bashes enemies with it in combat. If we wanted to be "real" we'd have to

scuff this miniature up to reflect the battles it's been in.

Yours Truly, aka Aoiki, the fearsome wu-jen wielding elemental spells of fiery death. Or most often, casting haste on her fellow Steel Hearts so that they can more easily battle the foes.

Note the very faint gray scribbles on the back of my miniature. It's supposed to be a tattoo since my character has them all over. Oh! and notice my winged-cat familiar, called a tressym, who is painted to look like my very own furry "child" Gizmo.

Okay, so may it's not exactly like Gizmo, but close enough! (Yes, even my kitteh's do cosplay).

Then of course to my intrepid husband, playing a monk named Ryukin who wields soulfire and fists with equally devastating consequences.

The braided hair is not something the Big B would ever do IRL (In Real Life), no matter how I beg him to grow out his hair.

This is the infamous gnome Wigglethorp, who briefly joined the game while my roommate Corry still lived with us. Alas, he had to move out due to the imminent birth of his first child and so Wigglethorp was retired.

Instead, his awesomely neato name was perserved forever when Corry adopted a furry black kitten and promptly named him Wigglethorp.

I suspect that he named him so just to piss off 1T, who HATED his gnomish monniker.

Here is our faithful cleric, healer of the party and always last to act because of his shitty iniative. Kendrick has a lot of neat stuff happening on his miniature as well.

A cleric just isn't a cleric without his holy books, his shield, scalemail, or a badass mace to bludgeon his enemies to death.

And of course, every good D&D group needs it's rogue! Relegated to NPC status while his player DM's, Tomah is our intrepid trap-finder and sneak-attack killer. Those daggers may look small, especially when wielded by a halfling, but trust me, you don't want to let this bugger sneak up behind you.

Ah, the whole group lined up and ready to go. Surely the Steel Hearts can take on any foe!



Sadly, the last time we played Xander had an unfortunate accident. He got severely bumped around and his sword-arm suffered the brunt of the fall, causing his arm to fall right off.

We're pretty sure it couldn't have been gangrene, considering we do have a cleric in the group, after all.