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Oh, no! Another World of Warcraft post!

But wait! Before you click over to look at the new iPods, let me explain.

Actually, this next part is too much explanation for readers who play the game, but it is a necessary evil for those who don't but want to hear what happened.

Okay. Here is how some stuff works:

Characters die all the time. That's fine, because all that really happens is that those dead characters without someone to resurrect them get a nice jog as a ghost returning to their body to get their stuff. There is no penalty other than some damage to everything you were wearing which can be repaired in towns in exchange for gold. That light "death penalty" is part of what makes the game fun because there is little fear of exploring into new areas.

Another mechanic I need to explain is combat initiation.

If Webinara is wandering along and sees a monster doing something . . . monster-like . . . she can shoot an arrow at it and it will come over and pound on her until either combatant is dead or runs away.

But if that monster is near another monster, there is a possibility that the damage from Webinara's arrow will annoy that guy, too, and he will join his friend in the great race to send Webinara home for armor repairs. This process is known as "pulling" since the goal is to bring the monsters to the character -- Like pizza delivery but slightly more violent.

Now that that is out of the way, let me tell you why I was awake until after 2am Wednesday morning.

My real-life friends and I (3 Innkeepers total with two guys I don't know IRL from another (lesser) guild) attempted an assault on an underground fortress known for complicated monster pulling set ups.

We powered our way through the first area with the power of sheer awesome and moved on to the second room with a big bad guy.

This room was filled with groups of eight linked monsters all ready to completely hate on everyone who attacked any one of them. Four groups of eight, with some other monsters wandering around. I'm not sure why they were hanging out there, or where they go to the bathroom, but that was the basic set up.

So our brave and heroic priest, Mairick (Innkeepers member and long-time personal friend) stepped up and cast "Mind Control" on one of the monsters and had it attack his former friends.

This was awesome and fairly amusing until the controlled monster died and all of his surviving friends (and they all survived) ran over to kill us all. A lot.

So, one ghost run later, we were facing the same room one monster short. Then Mairick formulated a plan.

Stepping to the threshold of the cavern, he commanded the rest of us, "Get back!"

We did, but were a little bewildered.

Mairick cast Mind Control again, with predictable results. His controlled monster was slain and then a bunch of still-angry bad guys ran over and smashed Mairick into the flagstones. The rest of us were far enough back to not share in the pain and the monsters went back about their regular business.

At this point, the genius of his plan became clear. He asked another party member to resurrect him and stand back so that he could do it again.

We all knew this would eventually be bad, since everything he was wearing would need to be repaired and those trips back to town would take forever and cost a fortune.

Mairick calmly soothed our fears with a knowing, "I thought of that. That's why I'm naked."

And that is the story of how a naked priest killed every monster in Blackheart the Inciter's room.

To his credit, he wore his Innkeepers tabard the whole time for modesty as well as advertising.

This should also provide some background as to why playing D&D with the same player in real life makes me "twitchy" -- If not twitchy in an entirely bad way.

Also, the picture for this post is just a World of Warcraft priest, not Mairick specifically. It was as close as I wanted to get after Google image searching the term "naked priest" with disastrous results.