All good things must come to an end. In 1991, TSR decided that they wanted to create their own line of comics, breaking the licensing agreement they had with DC. This meant the end of several ongoing titles at DC, including Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and Forgotten Realms. As such, “Rites and Wrongs” is our last tale with the adventurers from Waterdeep.

Fittingly, it all begins with some drunken carousing…

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I griped a bit about the ending of “Pillar of Gold” due to a god just popping up and resolving the story in the last couple of pages, but gods do tend to meddle in the Forgotten Realms. The real issue is when a god has no role in the tale other than as a resolution mechanic. By comparison, “Summer in the City” features a good dose of Selûne, but the ending doesn’t feel like a cop-out. This is largely due to the fact that the heroes still earn the ending they get. It also doesn’t hurt that Selûne has been part of the ongoing story since the beginning, so she doesn’t pop out of nowhere to save the day.

Despite the need for divine intervention, “Summer in the City” is a light-hearted tale and serves as the last one-shot story in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons comic. Our team of Kyri, Onyx, Timoth, and Vajra are all together once again, so let’s see what they get up to on a hot summer day in Waterdeep.

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In the last storyline, Kyri got a turn in the spotlight with “Death and the Dragon’s Eye.” This time, it’s Onyx’s turn as the lead. Once again, the rest of our intrepid adventurers get cameos or nothing in terms of appearances. I think this was a result of the creative team wanting to do some character-building for what they thought was going to be a longer-running title. However, it could also be a bit of meta-commentary on D&D as a game, since almost everyone has experienced a game night where most of the players couldn’t make it and the DM had to cobble together a hasty side quest.

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It’s no secret that I really like Kyriani, especially after her makeover during “The Ostus Legacy.” Once she combined her “good” and “evil” halves, she became confident, charming, and clever. Her flirtatious ways, usually avoided in 1990s fantasy heroines, are something she has no shame over but do not define her character. So I should be very happy that she gets a story arc focused on her, especially since she’s been mostly a side character since “The Ostus Legacy.”

I should be happy…so am I?

Well, let’s dive into “Death and the Dragon’s Eye” to see if Kyri gets the treatment I think she deserves.

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Our last, light-hearted tale mentioned that Timoth and Vajra were off on another adventure. In “Scavengers,” we see what they are up to while Onyx is shirking his responsibilities in repairing Selûne’s Smile. Sadly for Timoth and Vajra, it’s not as silly as Onyx’s quest to rid Waterdeep of lawyers.

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Dungeons & Dragons has an inherent amount of silliness to it, derived its roots as a casual hobby filled with puns and friendly banter. You can absolutely do epic quests with it, but the game often works just as well if it tells smaller, sillier stories. This story is one of the latter, as Onyx the Invincible and Khelben Arunsun team up to deal with something that the city of Waterdeep has outlawed for years: lawyers.

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By 1990, DC Comics had four concurrent Dungeons & Dragons comics running: Dragonlance, Spelljammer, and two Forgotten Realms titles. A TSR Worlds Annual one-shot that year tied all four settings together, while the Forgotten Realms Annual featured a crossover between the two Toril-bound adventuring groups. Meanwhile, the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Annual went for something much smaller, but very fun…

D&D is the original role-playing game, yet the media that ties into it very rarely leans into the “game” aspect of it. That’s natural, since it’s hard to handle that sort of fourth wall breaking without feeling trite. “Players,” the tale told in the 1990 Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Annual, manages to subvert that by simultaneously fleshing out our cast of heroes and presenting them as characters in a game. All it takes is a little magic…

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The heroes of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and Forgotten Realms lines were part of the same adventure in “Jammers,” but they never actually crossed paths. The 1990 Forgotten Realms Annual changes that, as the crew of the Realms Master drops anchor in Waterdeep and runs headlong into the adventures who live at Selûne’s Smile.

Continue reading “Comics & Quests: Waterdhavian Nights” →