Ultimately, the enemy overcome their problem with their too closely ranked numbers by giving up any pretense of order or formation, and just jump onto the heroes in a massive, chaotic jumble. Since we’re talking Orcs and Trolls here, a hidden desire to do so was actually present from the start, but they didn’t admit it to each other before it became inevitable. Even Orcs and Trolls are sometimes ashamed of their baser instincts, it seems.

Shameful or not, our heroes’ final, desperate struggle is now truly on, and even if the odds are hopeless, they sure don’t want to go down before taking an adequate number of their enemies with them. So it’s only opportune that every member of the party tries to keep track of the number of enemies they’ve taken down, and the numbers are indeed heroical.

Save for Snuka, in whose case the numbers are genocidal, but he doesn’t really count. His license to deploy chemical weapons give him an unfair advantage…and if wasn’t for the fact that his stock of gas is limited, he might in fact have been the only one who could have stood a chance to overcome the numerical odds. But the gods, or rather DM, only gave him a single can…a fact for which DM, or even the gods, might feel profoundly grateful right now.

The others’ scores are naturally much lower, but no less impressive, considering the much more honourable means with which they achieved them. Gregory is in the lead, of course – beyond a certain level, physical attacks just no longer can keep with the havoc wrought by spells, no matter how skillful the user. The others struggle valiantly…save for the Professorian, who’s struggling mathematically. As has been indicated before, his math abilities are nowhere near to where they used to be, but rest assured that his numbers would be similarly impressive to the others’, if not more so, if he could just properly count them.

And with a situation this desperate, even Si’ri engages in the fight, as reluctant as she was, up to now, to consider herself an adventuring member of the party. And her score is pretty impressive as well, for a member of her species. She’s already brought down .65 Orc…if she keeps on like that, he soon might actually notice her.

All the fighting might avail our heroes little, in the end, but I’d say their later entry into Valhalla is already about 80% assured.

More on Monday.