Wednesday, January 24, 2024

One Hit Die - Legend of the Lich Lord

Nerrena the Necromancer (Victoria Souter) has brought the Lich Lord to this realm.  Only one thing prevents the Lich Lord from unleashing hordes of undead across the land: his orb.  He dispatches Nerrenea with his 3 Shade Knights to recover his orb from the Druids of Alden Green.  Mwhahahahahahaaa!

Meanwhile, our heroes are once again questing, but something is different.  The Chosen One - Gwen the Healer - has been replaced by Cassandra the Paladin (Mikaela Cochrane).  The party has only just conquered a dungeon and recovered an amulet of resurrection.  They have hardly left the dungeon when they encounter Willard the Druid.  He is a Sapling from Alden Green and seeks aid against a necromancer and zombies.  The party gladly kills the zombified druids, much to Willard's horror, but then must flee when Nerrena and the Shade Knights arrive.

Though the plot is fairly straight forward, there are twists and turns to provide entertainment.  This was probably the first time I had seen the Girdle of Masculinity/Femininity portrayed.  Despite a warning, Torvald (Andrew David Long) tried it on and became a female version of himself (Joanna Gaskell).  That was funny enough, but it got even funnier when Azarus (Phil Burke) started hitting on female Torvald.  And it gets crazier from there.  Nicely done.  Other gags weren't quite as good.  The hat of invisibility was taken almost directly from Erik the Viking (1989).  Sasha (Julie Orton) acquires a magic weapon for use against the undead: a shovel.  Huh, that's really kind of appropriate.  The fancy runes sold it.

The production values are surprisingly good.  The special effects may not be top notch but still pretty good.  The use of animation while Azurus was under the effects of a hallucination potion was inspired.  I'm sure that saved a lot on special effects and worked just as well for the task at hand.

All in all, the Legend of the Lich Lord is great popcorn fun.  Highly recommended for gamers.

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