Thug Muggers in the Tunnels 2/17/24
Table Talk:
Just to clarify a point about the Bag(s) of Tricks, they can be used 3 times in a day, and then they need to recharge on a long rest, but can be used up to 3 times again the next day.
I gave a heads up to the players that i’m going to be trying a few experimental exercises on the next couple big fights. I’ll wait to put the full details here for when they actually come up, but i’m hoping it will help with everyone's speed and focus during combat and initiative.
In this next chapter, we are about to meet someone new. I make a point of including as much diversity and inclusivity as i can cram into my worlds and writings before they explode. The person we are about to meet is part of that. They are an analogue for some people with some kinds of mental handicaps. Very intelligent inside, and with many ways of showing and expressing that intelligence, but maybe having difficulty with language and communications that less kind people take to mean they are dumb. Please be aware that this is an attempt to include those people in the fantasy world – and NOT an attempt to belittle, reduce, embarrass, ridicule, or mock them!
Before we open up, i’ll get an initiative roll from everyone, and Wisdom saves from Cypress and Rae, just so we don’t disrupt the narrative flow.
I just happen to think that we could be doing better than this
It seems to me like people forgot what brethren is
Whatever it is
We need to resolve the problem so we can evolve the consciousness
See I'm just trying to be the best version of myself
And that's what i would expect from anyone else
You can't stop trying to develop
The moment you stop trying
To improve
You lose yourself
– Yahick, “Foresight”
🛡️🔨🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿Chapter 10: Banked Coals
🛡️🔨🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿Chapter 10: Banked Coals
Cypress sits on the anvil dangling his legs and holding the fist sized crystal in his hand. He’s staring at its endless depths, nearly mesmerized by all the fine cuts and facets reflecting the light of the torches and the forge. Is there… is there something else inside there…
His legs stop swinging with a start and he looks up.
The last hour has been dominated by the sounds of flamboyant snoring from the Slaad – no one can snore like a toad man with a bivalval vocal throat sack and and internal nostrils – but now the wheezing, croaking, hissing, flaring, sawing and chewing sounds have all ground to a halt. Cypress reaches down from his seat atop the anvil and bumps his foot against Bostra’s shoulder. The sergeant winks one eye open for less than a heartbeat, then he calmly sits up.
While Bostra is talking to the giant humanoid toad, Ari is checking over the gear. She slings the new cloak off her shoulder and holds it up to examine. The ends were worn and singed from the first explosion, but now the ends are also frayed and beginning to unravel. She gets the impression that one more big fire blast like that, and this cloak is done for. Then she pats the pouch on her belt where she keeps the money. But her hand only hits a flaccid leathery sack. She looks down and sees that it’s nearly empty. Ari wiggles her pointy fingernails through the hole at the bottom and curses. She spends the next thirty minutes on her hands and knees trying to pick up all her coins.
In the real world, Brooke lost the money. The wet-erase marker she used to mark the money on her sheet got smeared into a black blob, and she had to go back through her notes to guess the right amount. Tragic.
Bostra comes back to the group and we see the Slaad slowly stand up. He moves around the room, and of all things, begins to tidy up. He moves around the shop jerkily picking things up with one hand and placing them in a basket he’s made with his other arm and his apron, with a dazed, almost blank expression on his face.
Cypress rolls a 23 Medicine Check, and watches him closely. At first they’re concerned by the staccato jerky movements like a puppet or an automaton. An arm shoots out, the fingers close, the arm yanks back. Repeat. But the more Cypress watches this, the more he can see that this… whatever it is… this behavior, is normal for the Slaad. He sees how the Slaad’s eyes seem to go blank and unfocused, then they lock onto something. His head turns, his feet move, and then his arm reaches out. Cypress is unavoidably reminded of how some frogs tongue dart out to catch bugs. It’s just as if a switch had glitched and now the Slaad’s brain thinks his whole body is just tongues on every limb.
He’s worried about this for a few minutes, thinking that maybe he caused that glitch in his brain, until it occurs to them. If this were abnormal, surely the blacksmith would be freaking out about it. After all, he worked with his hands, didn't he, so he should know best, and if he’s not concerned about it, then it must be normal. If anything, the toad-man seems to be upset at how slow his movements are. Like an old man who takes a fall, he still walks with a cane, but he has to go slower for a few days, but keeps getting annoyed that he can’t move the way he did before the fall.
The hobbit decides that introductions are in order, and he walks up to the eight foot tall Slaad. Standing at his knees, Cypress looks up, and then up, and then up a third time. “Hello, I am Cypress Witchazel, cleric and se–”
Before Cypress can get any more out, the Slaad reaches down a hand the Size of Cypress’s head. “Hello, Cypress Witchazel, I am Guruuuuhckck.” He waits.
After a slightly confused pause, Cypress shakes the giant hand. Then Guruuuuhckck’s hand jerks back to his side and he stands back to a rest. This time though, when he stands at rest, his back is straight and his face content. A clear difference from the slumped, knuckle-dragging, drool pose he had before the fight.
Cypress tries again, “I am here, well we're here, to help deal with the Thugs wh-”
“Yes. I know. And I thank you.” Guruuuuhckck interrupts, nodding.
Bostra smiles then pulls down a crate. He points to Sorin, and then the crate. Nodding to Guruuuuhckck he sits on a large rock. “I think perhaps, Guruuuuhckck, it would be easier for my friends here if you told us your story.” He says with a wave, annoyingly pronouncing the Slaad’s name perfectly.
The Slaad steps forward, nodding, then hesitates and coughs.
“I wanna say sorry. Please… do not think I am dumb. I am slow and my words have always been bad, but I am smart here.” He holds up his hands and we see delicately strong tendons in his finger webbing, “And here,” He holds up his hammer and now we see that the whole thing has been finely etched and engraved, under all the dirt, it is a work of art unto itself. “And here,” he reaches over his shoulders and bends a long elbow to point down at the top and back of his head, “But never here.” He points at the throat sack that has been buzzing and humming in harmony with his speech.
“I remember working upstairs… I came back down when the frosts began. Not here, but to the warm lakes below. Then as the sun came again I went up to work. I lit the forge above and began the yearly repairs. Belgruuse would bring me pipes. Aaaand levers. Aaaand gears. My brother RhenDū would bring me chains. Aaaand nets. Aaaand bars. Yaos would bring me iron straps. Aaaand magic nails. Aaaand collecting rods. I spending hours and hours slamming the hammers down,” He smiles and rubs his hammer with the joy of someone petting their oldest and favorite pet. “We worked. Aaaand we slept. Aaaand we ate. Aaaand we laughed…”
His voice falls off. “Then Yoas disappeared… His study was empty and we found cracks in the walls. There were Ash Zombies roaming the halls, but RhenDū pushed them back to the hollow doors… A few days later, they came for me.” He smiles and lets out a deep chuckle, “Stupid Thugs at first with Rats in baskets. Pulgrok and I laughed when I told him about it afterward! I didn’t even need my hammer! ‘Don’t threaten rats to a boy from the Eck-cha-taw swaps I said!’ We had a good laugh…''
His smile drains away and his booming happy voice gets quieter. “Pulgrok said the watch was sending someone to deal with duh Thugs. He told me about the group that they had sent. The school wizard. Aaaand the demon girl.” He looks around slowly, “Aaaand the short holy mans. Aaaand then an elf with a stick for beating back duh rats…” He points and smiles. “Hey dat’s you!”
“But when they came back… It was Rat-Men and they were too big to eat. Aaaand the green dwarf-orc. The one with the shield aaaand duh hooks. She was there… She hit me big. Brought me down here. They made me take the key to the green lake. Made me lock Krubos inside! Then she hit me again and when I woke up it was red…”
He rubs his head, in between the eyes, “I don’t remember very much more. I been here in this place…” he looks over at the forge and the table and shudders in horror, “This place… all wrong and cold.” He motions to the wall where we can see a gigantic collar and leash, “Sometimes the green dwarf-orc lady, she take me out. She takes me and I hate it… but it feels good. One time the tall squid man… We talked and I felt alright… I worked here for days and weeks I think now. Making weapon. Repairing shield. Breaking pipe. Building machine. All the time, Red. Red thoughts. Red head. For days and weeks I have been big stupid! No thoughts… not thoughts… then a thought comes and I do things! Then not thoughts and I have to wait. All empty head and dumb…”
“Now… Now I think I will go home. Try to rest and be okay. Reach out to RhenDū and recover.”
Bostra stands up and motions to the Slaad. They start talking in hushed tones, but we can make out some of Guruuuuhckck’s words. “Not tired”, “Alive”, “need to move”, and “need to do!”
While we take a second to take all that in, i will say that during this rest, Guruuuuhckck will be able to do or help with a set number of tasks from a list. So, Nymbus, since you did the surgery that fixed him, and Sarah, since you helped by adding the tools, both of you roll D6s and the total will be the number of actions he can do.
Nymbus: “3.”
Sarah: “2.”
So, as a team, you all can choose 5 things that Guruuuuhckck can do for you or help you with. Here is the list:
Look at the map we have of the sewers and fill in the caves and bits of Thug tunnels that he knows about
Attach the Hunter’s Mark slate to a weapon
Sabotage the Thug’s equipment here
Call for Zaanth and get her to head this way
Lay out traps, both in this room, and along his way as he goes.
Help search the shop for the key to the gear plinth we saw before, and any loot we may have missed
Make any basic tools
Make two basic standard weapons
Make one standard magic weapon with a Common rarity.
Help you get the sewers working a bit better by giving instructions
Repair weapons/equipment
Ari/Brooke, Cypress/Nymbus, Rae/Sarrah, and Sorin/Ashley take some time to discuss the options of what Guruuuuhckck might do to help them out before leaving.
“I think,” Cypress starts, “that setting traps on his way out, is a given right?” There are nods all around and he continues, “It might help us a little bit. But I think the more important thing is that it will help keep him safe as he gets out of here.”
“Agreed.”
“No objections here.”
“Yup,” Sorin says with a thoughtful expression, “Now, the word ‘sabotage’ comes to mind and I have to admit it does make me feel happy.”
“Giddy,” Bostra says, walking back over to them, “it makes you feel giddy. Excitement, not joy.”
“Still…”
Cypress rolls their eyes, “if it comes to smashing things apart, then I have a hunch we can manage that without any help.”
Rae nods towards the corner with the work table. “And I had a look at the Thug’s gear over there. It looks like it was brought here for repairs. Most of it is already smashed.”
Sorin looks dejected.
“Okay, Sorin, if it means that much to you, I’ll help you Sabotage that cart.” Bostra laughs, putting extra cartoon excitement on the word ‘sabotage’ and jerking a thumb at the mechanized cart built to wreck the sewers. Sorin beams back at him. “But only after I get some sleep.”
Ari’s been scratching at the base of her horns, “I think finding that key is important.”
“I can help with that,” Bostra nods, “I got a good impression of that gear tower while Rae was busy falling into all those holes.”
Rae blushes and Ari mutters, “I’m not sure why, but I really feel like we need to go into whatever room that is.”
“Speaking of rooms,” Rae jumps in, trying to distract from her failures, “it sounded like he was taken in some of the Thug rooms. We should see what he remembers, and get them marked on our map, so we know what we're in for.”
Everyone agrees to this readily enough.
“Now… I think we should call Zaanth.” Ari says. Her eyes glitter with hell flames in the corners.
Cypress sighs, “I get that, but we’re worn out. I think we need at least a day of easier work to recover.”
Leaving these two to discuss it, Rae walks over to the Slaad and politely asks, “Excuse me, um… Sir. I found this in that pile of junk,” She pulls out the slate with the Hunter’s mark spell etched in it. “Could I ask you to attach it to my staff?”
Guruuuuhckck nods eagerly and sets the silvery metal on top of the forge, then motions for Rae to wait. He pumps the bellows a few times and then lets the fire sit to heat the metal slowly. Then he steps to the coal box and fishes around for a while. After some digging, he managed to find a piece of coal about the size of Rae’s fist. He looks down at her and Rae is the only one in the room that can see his right eye subtly glowing. That’s because his right eye is covered in a faint mask of Ki. He looks her up and down, and then opens his huge mouth. “You are a Ki monk, yes?” He asks it like a question but doesn’t wait for a response before talking on. He plunks the sooty black rock into Rae’s hand, “I need to see you. To look at your Ki. Push your Ki into this coal rock. I will use it to make a Ki key!” he burps a laugh like an excited kid happy at his own pun.
Rae pushes the last of her remaining Ki into the black stone and they both watch as the faint lines of her energy spiderweb all across its surface. Guruuuuhckck’s fingers are extremely gentle and agile now as he softly places his delicate finger pads in gaps between Rae’s Ki. Then he gives her a polite ‘we’re done for now’ smile and turns his back to her, setting to work.
When Rae walks back over to the others, she’s surprised to see Sorin playing the role of peacemaker.
“Look I want to call and beat up Zaanth too, Ari, but Cypress is right. We don’t know when she’d arrive and we’re too weak to take it right now. So look, Instead why don’t we talk to Guruuuuhckck and see if he can tell us something to do to help repair the sewers. Or at least ease up the strain, like we did upstairs.”
Ari growls, “Fine.”
Cypress sighs, “That’s actually a good idea. I’ll talk to him after he adds whatever he can to the map.”
Okay, so that Guruuuuhckck’s tasks sorted. 1: attach the Hunters Mark to Rae’s staff, 2: update the map, 3: help search the shop 4: give instructions to aid the sewers maintenance, and 5: Boobie trap (stop laughing, Sorin) this room and lay out traps behind him as he leaves.
We also have Bostra’s 2 spaces to help out arranged; help search the shop, and help sabotage the Thug’s equipment.
I’ve been giving everyone the chance to take basic actions during rests (decoding notes, learning spells, attuning, etc.), so i’m going to do that again. Everyone will have 4 slots for actions (~3 hours basically), but 2 of those back-to-back slots will have to be the actual resting/sleeping/ meditating.
Bostra and Cypress take the first round of sleep. They carry a couple worn bed rolls into the far tunnel on the other side of the forge and lay them out. The old sergeant drags over a crate laying it on the short edge, then takes out two nails from a pocket, steps up on the tall edge of the crate and pushes one into the gap between a vertical wooden support beam and the rough rock wall. He does the same thing on the other side, and comes back to his bag. Bostra lifts up and unfolds his cloak, then unfolds the lining. He loops the embroidered holes in the collar over the nails and the hall turns dark.
Cypress smiles as he pats out his padded roll, “I always thought you old campaigners could fall asleep anywhere.”
Bostra chuckles, laying out his own mat up against the crate. “It’s a skill you pick up, to be sure, but darkness still helps.”
The hobbit is just starting to doze off when he hears a crunch and then mushy chewing with the smell of chicken and peas. He turns and looks at the dark patch by the crate.
With a mouth full of mush, Bostra answers, “Sho doesh a full shumach.”
They both laugh and Cypress nods off.
After Guruuuuhckck has finished reshaping and fitting the spell slate, Sorin goes up to him. “Um, excuse me, sir.”
The frog looks down and raises one eyebrow three inches above the other.
“Can I use your forge, or I mean, may I?” He corrects, and then explains, “I have a friend, a familiar I need to summon, and if your forge is already going then I won't need my brazier.”
The Slaad croaks, “Go ahead. It is not my forge. This is just the forge those Thugs put here for me.” Then turning away to mount the silver metal on Rae’s staff, “I would never dishonor any forge by setting it at such an angle…”
So Sorin, are you using the Thug’s forge to summon Akris?
Ashley: “Yeah, that makes sense so he doesn’t have to set up his own thing.”
*silently counting down from 5 and waiting to see if he checks anything*
Ashley, hopeful: “Plus who knows, it’s a bigger, more intense fire. Maybe he’ll get summoned stronger.
Good news! Akris is summoned strong, by the forge! He’ll have advantage on all attacks – not against Thugs or cultists.
Ashley: “Yes! Wait wha-”
But since it is their forge, he will have disadvantage on attacks against Thugs or cultists.
Across from the hallway with Bostra’s makeshift curtain, Ari and Rae huddle behind the cart with all the bags of stone. They agreed that this needs to be done, but that the recently-un-possesed toad-man shouldn’t see the paper, just in case.
Ari holds Zaanth’s note up to the side of the cart and points to one of the sections they haven’t managed to decode yet.
Rae takes a stub of charcoal pencil out of a fold in her robes and starts writing letters on the side of the cart.
Together, the two slowly work their way through the message; writing letters on the wood and crossing them out, slowly piecing together the meaning.
After a few hours, they find the meaning of the coded phrase:
“They have forgotten their true nature. Together we will end civilization.”
After an ominous look at each other, Ari and Rae cover up the note and put it away in Cypress’s bag.
Just in time too, it turns out, as the giant Slaad plods over to them. His thick leather boots crunch over the gravel floor and he holds out what looks like a wooden shortsword. Rae blinks and realizes it’s her staff. She takes it back, “Thank you, Gur, uh, grruu, um… Thank you.”
Guruuuuhckck – by now used to humans being unable to fit his name in their mouth (because it’s too big) – smiles broadly and nods, “You will need to attune to it right away. Your staff is …” he struggles finding a common word and gives up, “corbachkl, um, not alive, but… thinking?” He flounders on, “You will need to attune. To show it what it is now.” This confusing explanation now over, he stands there waiting.
Ari rescues them both from the horrifying jaws of awkward silence, “You said, you could help me to fill in our map?”
Then the Slaad and Ari walk over to the work table. Ari using the bit of Rae’s pencil she still has in her hand to draw in lines where Guruuuuhckck points. There are lots of points where he seems confused and can’t say what a room is, but draws symbols on the dirty wall which Ari then copies down onto the map.
Cypress Witchhazel, Seed of Sheela and halfling of the far luinë-ria hills is dreaming, and the dream becomes a memory. He’s in his auntie Menel’s big kitchen. The wall full of ovens are all lit, and the grandkids and cousins are rolling out pies. Auntie Menel and Auntie Nehte have been bakers since their wedding some eighty or more years passed. The range of little brown domed ovens along the wall and floor had become a familiar sight on these little vacations up river. All the extended children of the family came up to make sweets.
On this day, everyone was baking pies. Once a thick layer of sweet cornbread crust was laid, they topped it with cold icing cream and spice pickled fruits, then laid out the pastry tops and cut them to fit.
Now with all the pies in their ovens, and the oven doors held shut with iron wedges, Nehte brought out the cards and began to deal around the big kitchen table – more of a workbench than dining table. Then she set the thick deck of the erëa cards in the middle and everyone picked up their hands. The next few hours were spent in angry fun as hands grew and shrunk and grew and shrunk. The longer the game went, the more intense it became as the loving bonds of family were tested. After a second hour and still not a single person with less than five cards, Menel got up in a panic. She hammered the wedge from a set of oven doors… and tragedy struck.
Inside was a charcoal brick that had once been a delicious pie!
The dream ends with tears and everyone turning to Barabra. Demanding to see her hand and accusing her of cheating.
While Cypress dreams violent acts of pie-revenge, Sorin ducks under Bostra’s curtain and sets up his own bed roll a little further down the hall. He begins to meditate… with Akris flicking his tongue in the boy's ear and snickering.
As the others rest, Rae sits down with her staff, her eyes half closed. She is pushing her Ki out of her hand and letting it flow into the staff. As it flows between the grain of the wood and around the hammered in pins, she can feel the tiny vibrations of it hovering. Her Ki picks these tiny tremors up, almost like a voice whispering, “What am I now? I am more than I was.”
And Rae’s Ki turns an unseen pale blue like calm ice on a lake as she soothes the wood.
Having now marked the map with a few new areas that Guruuuuhckck could remember, or piece together, Ari yawns and thanks the Slaad for his help. Then she and Rae bump into Cypress and Bostra. The former two walking into the darkened hallways, and the latter walking out into the lit shop.
As the other two make up their beds and drift off, Cypress looks at Bostra, “Are you still up for helping me look around here for that key, and anything else we missed?”
Bostra yawns and nods.
“Oh yes,” Guruuuuhckck rumbles, “The key. I have been thinking about that!” There’s a sound like wet leather on a canvas tarp as he scratches his expansive forehead. “I would have kept it close. Somewhere by the forge…”
They spend quite some time looking in and around the gray bricks of the forge and the wooden struts of the bellows. They pull out bricks and knock out the back draft panel. They remove the rake shelf and dig under the pot.
After more than an hour Cypress looks around for a place to sit down. “Are you sure,” he climbs up and sits down on the top lung of the bellows, “That it’s-” There’s a thunk.
All three heads turn to look at each other. Very slowly, as if not to scare the hope away, Cypress reaches out and bumps the bottom lung of the bellows. There is a thunk.
Guruuuuhckck reaches out and pulls at the leather siding. The tacks fly off with little pings to reveal the bare paddles, like wooden ribs to a strange arrow shaped beast. And, sitting at the bottom, a little bronze statue.
The Slaad’s big delicate hands pull out the statue and hand it to Cypress. “The key.”
The ‘key’ is a bronze tableau. A depiction of a ghost like a pac-man sheet ghost in bronze so tarnished it seems to be turning black. Around the ghost to the sides and behind are what look like flowing waterfalls in rust green copper. The base has a confusing silvery pattern of lines and points coming down from it, like the bidding on a key.
After a minute, Bostra comes up and hands Cypress a gray-brown bag covered in runes. “I tried looking in the discarded stones and found this.” He takes a moment to look at the statue, “Good you found the relief key.”
While Ari and Rae doze, Sorin gets up and stretches. He walks through the cloak-curtain, and waves to Bostra.
When Bostra walks to the wizard, Cypress climbs up on the work table and looks up at Guruuuuhckck. “I want to say thank you.” He bows and then holds the newly updated map up to the wall, “You mentioned that you could help us get the sewers back to, well to some kind of limping along?”
As i’m writing this now – two weeks later – i forgot the exact nature of the rolls, but Cypress gets 6 rooms on the map and instructions for.
Guruuuuhckck spends the next hour or so digging through his cultured memory and trying to explain the little bit of sewer operations he knows about, since his main job was to make and repair things. He marks out six rooms on the map. One is marked in a Thug room, “I cannot remember. When my brain walks there it goes red,” and one in the green room we found before, “Krubos needs to be opened again.”
While Cypress and the Slaad are writing out instructions, Sorin and Bostra look over the sewer-wrecking-cart-machine.
“I want to make it into a bomb.”
Bostra looks at him, “What explosives do you have?”
“I don’t have any explosives…” Sorin sighs and sulks, “Oh, but wait, I bet you have some!”
“If I did, I wouldn't tell you.”
“HEY! … yeah okay that's fair actually.”
“So what do we have?”
“Poison!” Sorin says, proudly holding up the bottle.
With an aided stealth roll of 22, just to see how it goes, Sorin and Bostra spend some time dunking unused tacks from the forge into the bottle and lining them on the inside of the giant people-shaped harnesses in front of the cart.
But with a 22 there’s more. Sorin gets an idea and passes some instructions to Bostra, then climbs under the cart. While the sergeant adjusts and bends some of the machinery with a long cheater bar, Sorin is deep inside the mechanism.
The entire thing is driven by the wheels, their drive shaft turning a series of rough gears and pegs to turn the machine arms and drop the cams that make the whole thing shake and spin the blades. Sorin finds that the harnesses are mounted underneath via a spring to smooth the whole operation as they pull the sewer destroyer over rocks and bumpy cobbles. With a wicked grin he removes the spring, then threads it and the straps through some gear pegs and remounts it at an angle a little further back. He takes a few more tacks and loosely wedges the harness straps so they appear to be coming out from the same spot they were at in the middle.
Now when the Thugs start to pull the machine it will move normally… until the first big bump where the straps will be pulled into the machine and start winding around the drive teeth. The more they pull, and the faster the car is going, the further they’ll be sucked in.
Up above, Bostra grunts and helps Sorin up. All the spinning blades and hammers have been skewed and tilted. It’s not so much that you’d notice right away, but all of them are now tilted and aimed at a central point just in front of the cart, essentially turning the whole contraption into a gigantic garbage disposal.
And one last thing before we go. A dream.
Ari and Rae are sharing a dream. It's the exact same dream from two different sides, and just like Cypress’s, this is a dream based in real events and memories.
It was back in the town of nómtaew (nómë - *taew), a few days after they had joined up and fled Ari’s village. It was there in what the townspeople generously called the grand square – a little area of wide street half overhung by extended floors of buildings and the public house balcony. Ari had talked Rae into using her monk skills to put on a performance. Doing tricks with her staff, balancing on it in mid air, back flipping off walls, etc.
The locals had all been amazed, and they clapped and cheered the grinning Raelle as she performed, and hadn’t noticed Ari cutting the strings on the pouches on their belts…
There is one major difference in the dream though for the two sleeping friends.
For Rae, it is a wonderful dream, reminding her of the origins of her amazing friendship with Ari. One of the first times her new friend saw and embraced her talents. She remembers showing off to the crowd and seeing Ari’s thumbs up from behind them. She smiles in her meditation.
For Ari it’s a nightmare. She remembers the ‘mark’ who later became her best friend and her Protector. She remembers tricking the stupid elven monk into distracting everyone while she picked their pockets. She cringes, her whole body curling up and shuddering in her sleep.
After a while they both come back to consciousness, and before she can take down the curtain-cloak, Rae is embraced in a big tight hug from Ari. Ari grips her tight with remorse, and Rae is happy to have such a nice hug from her friend after such a nice dream.
“As far as Roland was concerned, God o’ the Cross was just another religion which taught that love and murder were inextricably bound together—that in the end, God always drank blood.”
-Roland of Gilead –Stephen King, “Everything's Eventual: The Little Sisters of Eluria: I. Full Earth. The Empty Town. The Bells. The Dead Boy. The Overturned Wagon. The Green Folk.”
Table talk:
We decided to leave off here so that the Thug Muggers can decide which way they want to leave and have Guruuuuhckck boobie trap it behind them (That was just for you, Sorin). And since i didn’t know which options they would choose, or how many things they would roll to uncover, i didn’t have the updated map made yet for them to decide where they’re going. So, we’ll be starting off with that next time.
The bag that Cypress found with Bostra is another modified Bag of Tricks. This one is Cave centric and summons the following on a random d8 roll:
Just a small clarification here about last time when i mentioned back up characters. Well, those aren’t just in case someone dies. We’re at a high enough level now that we might be encountering some creatures with different and difficult effects. Say, for instance, that the team encounters a Basilisk in the caves. A Basilisk can turn someone to stone and render them immobile, but that can be reversed with a potion. That would leave a player completely out of the game while everyone else goes and finds said potion. Not fun. It’s a much better player experience if they can just hop into someone else's body for a session or two, and move in or around the city. Still playing, but in this other role.
Lastly, I asked Nymbus about Cypress's feelings on the Dungeons and Dragons Creature Classification, Aberrations – creatures that are natural in their own other dimensions, and either find themselves here (accident / to hunt) on this plane of reality, or are summoned and pulled here to this plane by ritual magic.
Nymbus, with no hesitation: “He views them a lot like invasive species. A nuisance that is disruptive to the ecosystem.”
And the people who summon them?
Nymbus, grim and threatening: “He sees them like poachers.”
