Tabletop RPGs can tell many different stories. The Advanced Dungeons & Dragons comic book presented a group of adventurers who took the tried and true track of living at an inn and facing whatever perils came through the city of Waterdeep. But the Forgotten Realms is a huge place, and not all adventurers stick to one locale. About a year after that first Realms-based comic hit store shelves, a second title emerged. Labeled Forgotten Realms, it followed a new group of adventurers who ranged quite a bit farther than the city of Waterdeep.

Catching Up with Agrivar

Like the AD&D comic, Forgotten Realms has a cast of adventurers who serve as our core protagonists. Nonetheless, the one who gets the most attention and character development throughout the series is our old friend Agrivar, who appeared in “The Gathering” over in the other title. Our story begins with our old paladin friend having begun the shaky work of recovery from many long years of alcoholism.

Agrivar’s swim gets interrupted when he spies a mysterious ship that tosses a satchel overboard and departs. The paladin picks up the satchel and brings it to the beach, where he examines it using his ability to sense evil.

The detection spell sends him reeling, demonstrating that the hand is very evil and very powerful.

Aboard the Realms Master

So what of the ship that tossed the strange artifact overboard? That is the strange magical vessel known as the Realms Master, which will become increasingly important in Agrivar’s life very soon. But right now, it’s the site of a very volatile altercation.

The mage is Dwalimor Omen, captain of the Realms Master, and he’s angry at his bosun Foxilon Cardluck for stealing an artifact known as the Hand of Vaprak. Except…Foxy didn’t do it (this time).

The actual culprit is Minder, a dwarf in the body of an iron golem, who has been Dwalimor’s friend for a very long time. She noticed that the wizard was acting unusual as he studied the hand, and opted to dispose of it.

So Foxy gets to remain unburned, but the crew of the Realms Master must track down the missing artifact before it falls into the wrong hands. Now the question is: do those wrong hands belong to Agrivar?

The Elven Prisoner

Agrivar himself is finding trouble in the form of a pack of gnolls who have captured an elven slave.

Proving that paladins don’t have to blunder into battle against uneven odds, Agrivar fells the first of the slavers with a blowgun.

The reference to Onyx the Invincible is one of only a handful of times that this comic refers back to continuity from the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons line. I like this approach, as comics too often become inaccessible unless you’re intimately familiar with previous stories. For this tale, you just need to know that Agrivar is recovering from a bad time. The reference to Onyx is an Easter egg that is otherwise just banter for those who haven’t read his previous adventure.

Agrivar fights well, but the gnolls outnumber him and he finds himself in a bad situation. But then he gets…a hand…

The mysterious artifact is apparently not something to be trifled with, although it’s certainly no small comfort for a paladin to get assistance from an evil relic.

The Crew Gathers

The elf is Vartan Hai Sylvar, a gold elf who thinks very highly of himself. On the bright side, this is part of a character arc for him. Unfortunately, we have quite a few issues of his smug and arrogant demeanor before he learns a lesson.

Foxy spots the pair on the streets of Baldur’s Gate and immediately informs Dwalimor and his warrior comrade Ishi Barasume. Dwalimor is less than happy to hear that Agrivar is carrying a severed hand on his belt as though it were a common dagger.

The story behind the Hand of Vaprak is a muddled one, as many legends are. The grandmother of trolls supposedly tried to trick an ogre child into pulling some chestnuts out of a fire. The child, Vaprak, seized the troll’s hand and reached in with her, burning both of them horribly. At the same time, he attained godhood, becoming the god of both ogres and trolls. So Vaprak is, according to legend, an ogre, troll, and deity all rolled into one.

None of that is true, but it makes for a decent fable.

Speaking of things that aren’t true, Ishi approaches Agrivar and Vartan while posing as a drunkard.

Once Ishi ascertains that neither speak her native tongue (and gets righteously upset at Vartan assuming she was flirting with him), she flips the table and knocks the hand over to Foxilon. Foxy scampers away while Ishi and Minder delay Agrivar and Vartan. Unfortunately, someone else seeks the hand as well…

The doppelganger is almost as good as his word, and poor Foxy is left on death’s door after a severe beating.

Agrivar’s Dilemma

Vartan stuns Minder with a light spell to the eyes (this was back in the day when light, a low-level spell, could nonetheless blind opponents), and he and Agrivar follow the trail of the hand all the way to the almost-dead Foxy. Agrivar tries to use his paladin ability to lay on hands while Vartan readies healing magic, only to find that something is wrong…

One constant with Agrivar is that he’s always dealing with some personal struggle. The Hand of Vaprak is basically another addiction he has to fight.

The gesture of healing Foxy gets Minder to accept the pair as allies, and they seek out the real Dwalimor to figure out what’s going on. Meanwhile, the doppelganger tries to take the Hand of Vaprak for himself and gets outmaneuvered by his master.

There is an ogre mage pulling the strings, and he now has possession of the artifact.

Elsewhere, the crew of the Realms Master, now with the additions of Agrivar and Vartan, puts their heads together to figure out what’s going on.

The banter in this crew is top-notch and the primary reason to read this comic. I really wish that, as Hasbro pushes D&D more and more into the mainstream, we’d get some animated or live-action adaptations of these adventures.

The Great Game

Dwalimor is a worldly fellow, and he knows a colleague in Baldur’s Gate who might help them find the Hand of Vaprak. Unfortunately, the artifact’s current owner, the ogre mage Gornak, is one step ahead of them, having killed and replaced Gondal.

Gondal seems pretty thoroughly decayed for someone who was murdered just recently. I’m going to assume the ogre mage hit him with a spell that aged him a few centuries in an instant.

Of course, Dwalimor doesn’t consider any wizard a friend, so he has Foxy pick the lock to the front door instead of knocking.

The time it takes Foxy to unlock the door also provides the wizard with a chance to provide some useful exposition, such as why he needs to consult with Gondal in the first place.

Dwalimor leaves Foxy outside as lookout, which upsets the rogue. Luckily, he’s not the only one who wants to get inside without Dwalimor’s permission. Way off in Shadowdale, the wizard Elminster has been tracking the Hand of Vaprak, and he’s dispatched two adventurers to recover it.

Alias and Dragonbait are the lead characters in the novel Azure Bonds (which later became the adventure module and computer game Curse of the Azure Bonds). It helps that the writer of this story, Jeff Grubb, was one of the TSR minds who not only brought the Forgotten Realms into publication but also co-wrote that novel.

Inside the tower, “Gondal” appears before the group and Agrivar tries to use his ability to detect evil to see through any deception. Unfortunately, he’s still having trouble using his abilities thanks to the Hand of Vaprak‘s influence.

Gondal promises information about the artifact, but only if Dwalimor participates in “The Great Game,” a tradition where one mage creates a lair of traps to confound the other. Dwalimor should sense trickery, but he lets his ego get the better of him.

Dwalimor Omen, despite having amazing magical abilities, is basically a kid at heart and loves to waste his time playing games.

The Game Goes Badly

Of course, the ogre mage has no intention of playing fairly. The group’s overconfidence combined with their belief that this is a nonlethal game divides them quickly. Minder falls into a trap which drops her into a furnace…

…Ishi gets cornered by the ogre mage and subjected to a charm person spell…

…and the rest of our heroes face a horde of skeletons that Agrivar can’t turn because his paladin abilities remain absent.

Dwalimor, for his part, seems happy to get the blood pumping until a skeleton hits him. Then the lightning bolts come out.

The game ends with Agrivar, Dwalimor, and Vartan finding “Gondal,” but he stands with Ishi enchanted and Minder in chains by his side.

Fight at the Finish

An irritated Dwalimor decides to end the game with a dispel magic spell, but that only makes things worse. The chained Minder was an illusion, and once dispelled it reveals as basilisk with its deadly gaze.

Agrivar takes out the basilisk, but gets a surprise when Ishi attacks him with lethal force.

Dwalimor attempts to retreat, but Gornak takes him out with a spell. It seems that the day is lost…were it not for Dwalimor’s wisdom at leaving some backup outside.

The Cavalry Arrives

Minder manages to get out of the building, glowing from the heat of the forge but not destroyed. She finds Foxy, who charges into the building with Alias and Dragonbait, saving Agrivar just in time.

Alias gives Agrivar the real history of the Hand of Vaprak. It turns out that it’s not the hand of a god but rather that of Gornak himself, enchanted with power from the god Vaprak and cut off in the old days when Elminster the Sage was an active adventurer.

Elminster sensed magic within the severed hand and tried to tap it for himself. After nearly dying from the attempt, he hid it away.

The greedy, ambitious part of Elminster’s past is something that doesn’t get explored very often, and I believe that most published material now tends to pretend it never existed. I wish writers would delve into it again, because there’s some very compelling stuff to be found in exploring an old man with ghosts of his impulsive youth following him.

Why did Alias choose to tell this story to Agrivar? Because Dragonbait sensed his inner conflict. The tale serves to provide an important lesson to the struggling paladin.

With a renewed sense of conviction, Agrivar leads the group to rescue Dwalimor, who is being tortured by Gornak until he reveals the secrets of his powerful magical ship. When Dwalimor won’t talk, the ogre mage tries to suck the life force out of him and gets a very nasty surprise.

Our heroes interrupt the ogre mage before he can kill Dwalimor. But Gornak has quite a bit of power himself–enough to create an earth elemental out of the tower’s floor and continue commanding the enchanted Ishi.

Foxilon comes to his captain’s rescue, aided by the fact that everyone underestimates halflings.

Once freed, Dwalimor’s greatest spell isn’t an offensive one but rather dispel magic to remove the charm person effect that made Ishi a foe. With the group mostly back together, they overcome Gornak and sever his hand once more.

The battle, unfortunately, causes the collapse of the tower, but Dwalimor teleports himself, Agrivar, and Dragonbait back to the Realms Master. There, in Dwalimor’s quarters, the ship has a portal to the Demiplane of Fear, which serves as the dumping grounds for the artifacts the crew disposes of. The hand compels Dwalimor to try to keep it, but Agrivar has enough sense of self to dispose of it.

Back at the tower, Alias, Foxy, and Ishi escape the collapse. Minder, now cooled down after being blasted with a cold spell, walks out of the rubble carrying Vartan’s petrified form. All seems well, save for the collapsed mage tower in Baldur’s Gate. But I suppose that Baldur’s Gate is used to such weirdness by now.

Denouement

Dwalimor knows stone to flesh, which allows him to restore Vartan to living form once more. Minder is cracked by the sudden heating and cooling, but not severely damaged. And Alias has some words of advice for Agrivar.

Foxy’s “loose end” is the donation of a fountain to the people of Baldur’s Gate, to be built atop Gondal’s collapsed tower. Gornak may be able to regenerate after his defeat, but it’s going to take him a long time to dig his way out of the architecture built on top of him.

Dwalimor, meanwhile, plans to pay a visit to Elminster of Shadowdale, which sets up the next storyline and will provide us with my favorite depiction of the old sage.

The only remaining loose end is the relationship of Ishi and Agrivar, as the former did kind of try to kill the latter…

Ishi decides to get to know Agrivar better, and Agrivar takes the advice of “Live and forgive” to heart. Our issue concludes with the crew boarding the Realms Master with Dwalimor’s promise that there are artifacts out there that make the Hand of Vaprak look like a child’s toy.

Thus concludes the first storyline of DC’s Forgotten Realms series. It’s a strong start that provides some ties back to its predecessor while presenting a new sort of adventure. Between this and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, DC did a good job of showcasing the different types of adventure one can have while remaining in the same world, showing just how big the Forgotten Realms really is.

_{Images: DC Comics}