Thug Muggers in the Past 2/19/23
Table Talk:
Diedrik surprised everyone with a surprise in-person visit as well as some coffees for everyone. Thank you Diedrik, it’s always nice to have you around in the flesh. He was wearing his trouble making hat though, so…
Sarah and Ashley got me Raelle’s and Sorin's backstories this week, so those are up for everyone who wants to read them. I gave both of them an offer for their bonuses, and they both accepted. It’s up to them now if they choose to share.
I reminded everyone to look up their classes in the Player’s Handbook and review the bonus actions/reactions they have. As we level up those reactions and bonus actions are a big part of what makes the characters more powerful, and since we will be facing bigger and better threats, it would be good to know what you can do against them.
Also, this week has flashbacks again, so be mindful, and watch your brain with the tense and perspective shifts please.
“What was a god? A focus of belief. If people believed, a god began to grow. Feebly at first, but if the swamp taught anything, it taught patience. Anything could be the focus of a god. A handful of feathers with a red ribbon around them, a hat and coat on a couple of sticks…anything. Because when all people had was practically nothing, then anything could be almost everything.”
-Mrs. Gogol —Terry Pratchett, “Witches Abroad”
🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿
Chapter 13: A Gelatinous Puzzle
🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿 Chapter 13: A Gelatinous Puzzle
Guadacubé senses the Stirge corpse still ahead, it’s wiggling and jiggling, but it sounds like it’s starting to bloat. There is a much better smell from just ahead and Guadacubé slorps over it, ignoring the dead Stirge. Mmmm… it’s fresh. It’s not still wiggling but still fresh. Oh it’s heaven! A hard crunchy outside, a soft gooey inside, and is that, a poison sack filling? It is! The flavor of the poison blood marinade under the crunchy bone like coating, oh it's so *𝒟¸𝑒𝓁,𝒾*𝒸𝒾*𝑜𝓊¸𝓈,! Guadacubé devours the dead Centipede, feeling the acidic poison refresh him, he swells up as it rejuvenates him and feeling the chain holding him tighten. After such a delicious feast, Guadacubé squelches down, refusing to budge and just enjoying the internal sizzling as the hard shell dissolves inside him, the soft glands popping as the ooze inside gushes towards his center.
Yeah, that’s how i’m starting this week. Strap in.
While Cypress is trying to get the Cube to move, Ari moves away from the group to scout down the wall. She checks the map and sees that this next turn goes to a wider hallway with a floor drain to one side, so she decides to see how much room there will be to maneuver the Cube. When she looks up from the map, she stuffs it in her pocket and draws her Rapier. “Stirge,” She yells.
Cypress looks back and forth between Ari and the stubborn Cube, then makes a quick decision. He drops the Dead Bloating Stirge in front of it and runs over to his teammate. After all, soon he’ll have another dead Stirge to use as bait, right? …right?
Cypress gets to her right as Ari slashes at the new Stirge, but they’re coming in hot and she misses. He draws his arm back, flicks his wrist and casts Thorn Whip, but the Stirge are in a bombing dive and he misses too.
Both of the new Stirge are locked on target. The first bombs straight into Ari’s neck for 7 damage, and the second, lands, proboscis out, on Cypress’s outstretched arm, entrenching its sucker deep in an artery for 6 damage.
🎲🗡️ A Midnight Caper . . .
Zavari, you feel the stinging pain on your neck as the hit lands. You turn to see the farmer standing over you, his cane raised for another blow.
You are a teenager (of the tiefling equivalent), and you’ve just been caught trying to break into the barn on the Foelard farm on the edge of town. You’ve been trying your best for several minutes now to pick the lock, completely absorbed in your work trying to turn the filled bits of metal inside it. You were completely absorbed in trying to get it open when he hit you, and now, you’re caught.
“Wんﾑｲ’尺乇 ﾘのひ りのﾉ刀ム ﾉ刀 ﾶﾘ ｷﾉ乇ﾚり ﾘのひ ﾚﾉｲｲﾚ乇 ｱひ刀ズ ﾉ 丂W乇ﾑ尺 ｲの 乇√乇尺ﾘ ムのり ひ刀り乇尺 ｲん乇 刀ﾉ刀乇 丂ひ刀丂 ﾉ’ﾚﾚ ｱひﾚﾚ ﾘのひ 乃乇んﾉ刀り ﾶﾘ ᄃﾑ尺ｲ 乃ﾘ ｲん乇 乇ﾑ尺丂 ﾑ刀り 乃乇ﾑ ﾘのひ ﾉ刀ｲの ｲん乇 乇ﾑ尺ｲん ｷの尺 ﾶﾘ 刀乇W ｱﾚのW ﾘのひ ﾚﾉｲｲﾚ乇 Wの尺ﾶﾚﾉ刀ム!” the farmer yelled in goblin. He stood over Ari with the stick raised over head. Normally she would be much taller than the older goblin, but with her kneeling on the ground to look at the lock, he seemed to loom over her.
Thinking fast, and making a bad performance roll, Adolescent Ari burst into crocodile tears. She made an attempt to cower under the farmer and tried hard to summon up tear ducts that dried out ages ago.
The farmer wasn’t buying it. In un-accented common he went on, “You nasty brat. You look like the same one I saw poking around my barn last night! Ha! You got away then but this time, I got ya!”
Ari doubled down, “Please mister Foelard, please!” She cried, “My parents are gone now, and there’s no food at home, and, and, and…” she sniveled. This time the performance roll was a 21.
The goblin’s eyes flashed as he raised the cane up over his head again.
Cypress, you see the Stirge on your arm, and as it pumps your blood into its under sack, it reminds you of something. You pumping action with the tube stuck deep in an artery, it looks almost like…
🎲🌿 Medical * Arcana * Schooling * Hospital . . .
You’re in your 30’s now and learning at the Clerical Hospital for Sheela. You and your teacher, Father John Mulch, were called out on an urgent emergency when a barn collapsed. You know that the M*A*S*H choppers (emergency teams known for their hasty transport, given the name because they work ‘chop chop) will be here soon, but in the meantime, you two need to get everyone seen to as best you can.
Father Mulch is kneeling beside one of the injured children. He pulled a long tube with needles on each end out, and has stuck one end into the patient’s arm, and one end into his own arm. He knelt there squeezing the bulb in the middle of the tube and you watched the leathery valve-ball pump the blood from your teacher to the patient.
After you and Father Mulch joined to form the holy seal and cast the magic needed for this, he let go of your hand. “Now run inside, grab some linens, clean if you can, and bring them out here.” He said and nodded towards the round door in the hillside, “then use the wide lacer in the bag and start cutting them into strips for bandages, we’re gonna need a lot.”
Cypress stood up and ran for the hole. The door was half open, and he pushed it aside as he went in under the hill. In the foyer, the good wife was standing there, kneading at her apron. “What are you doing in my house young man? Half our barn collapsed, and you're in here!?”
“Ma’am”
“You should be out with the good father, seeing to Jethery and the boys!”
“Ma’am-”
“Or at the very least propping up the sunken earth until the proper healers-”
“Ma’am,” Cypress tried again.
“So, what are you doing in this house!?” The good wife shouted, on the edge of tears.
Cypress took a breath to stay calm and extended a reassuring hand, “I am working to help your sons, ma’am-”
“-And Jethery, you mustn’t forget Jethery!” She interrupted.
“Exactly,” Cypress said, latching on to this brief thread of sanity. “So to help them we are going to need a lot of cloth to cut for bandag-”
“What!?” She said, and started to spin, “Not my good linens!”
And suddenly she fell.
Adolescent Cypress rolled a high dexterity save and caught the good wife, muttering as he gently set her down on the wooden floor, and propped up her head with a nearby work boot. “Give me strength, Sheela.” He whispered as he checked her vitals. She seemed ok, and he couldn't see any visible wounds. With his head to her chest, her heart sounded strong, if a little fast.
Cypress stood up, glad the good wife hadn’t woken up right as he was listening to her pulse, and set off through the house, looking for the laundry.
“What’s going on over there?” Rae yells over the Cube.
“I think we got it,” Ari shouts back, “It’s just two more Stirge.”
“I can blast a firebolt over the Cube and-” Sorin tries.
“NO!”
“What’s wrong with you?” Rae mutters.
🎲✨ A hulking good time . . .
What’s wrong with you, What’s wrong with you, whatswrongwithyou…
Sorin, you’re 13 years old. You’re in your apprenticeship with Tinkerer Bellfan. You’ve been working in his shop behind the Ironton front row for a couple years now. Most of the work these past few months has been stripping for the old gnome, taking in the broken parts he buys as scrap and taking them apart; prying off handles and sorting them in the handle bin, stamping out rivets and sorting them in the rivet bin, stripping off leather and hide and rolling it in the leather bin, etc. Sometimes it gets a bit dull, and you wish you got to help more on the things he actually makes. You half to admit the old gnome was right though, you have learned a lot from taking apart shields and dented helmets and broken tools, and everything else.
“What’s wrong with you, Sorin!?” said the angry voice from behind you. You turned and saw Bellfan stood atop his shop stool, as he waved a tan piece of paper in your face. “Now, I like to think I been a good master witch’ya,” he says, rolling up the paper, “I know yer growin’ lad and all. Tell true, I don’care much’a what wood cuts ya buy on yer own dime.” Then he shook a fist at you and hurdled the paper down on the center table.
Sorin went pale as fresh milk.
“But, don’e ye dare be bringin’ that smut in here! I pays me good money for dees wood cuts and thech-nee-call diagramen, an I don’e need yer gross smut rags in me drawers!” the gnome shouted.
NSFW, click to see
Sorin looked at the table and saw the woodcut picture of a Half-Orc woman, definitely a woman, a LOT of woman in fact, clad in delicate, dainty chain mail that would barely be big enough to even cover a halfling in decent company.
“Ma-ma-master Bellfan,” he said, now turning from pale milk, to tomato red, “I - I - I promise I don’t know how that got there, I - I - I…” he trails off stuttering.
Give me a persuasion roll Adolescent Sorin.
The old gnome tinkerer sighed and stepped off his stool. He walked across the table to Sorin, careful not to get his foot in the ‘orc smut’ there. He patted the young human's shoulder. “Look, boy,” he said, taking pity on the teen. “I were honest here, I don’e care wat’ch’yer dun or lookin’ at. Alls i’m say boy, is,” and then his grip tightened as he looked Sorin in the eyes, “No’ in my shop, an’ no’ in my thech-nee-call diagramen. Ken’in?”
Sorin gulped and nodded.
The gnome walked back across the table and said over his shoulder, “Pick up ‘er trash.”
When Sorin’s nervous, shaking hands picked up the woodcut, he saw the text inked at the top. “Sorin, my precious ♥” written in perfect flowing, and familiar, clerical handwriting.
Since Ari said they’re fine, Rae checks the chain, holding in the Cube. It looks secure, but the Cube does seem to be swelling up to an unmanageable size. Thinking about the first Gelatinous Cube they fought, she gulps and takes careful aim, then hacks off a corner of the Cube.
🎲🔔 A Night All Alone . . .
Raelle, you swung your arm down and made a clean cut. The branch in your hand snapped off and you let it drop to the ground. A branch of sappy green wood that you know would help keep the fire going through the night.
You’re in your adolescence now, in fact just a day or two after running away from the monastery. You’ve impressed yourself with your ability to live off the land as you go so far. You’ve found some berries and onions in the wooded places, and yesterday you even managed to get a cony for dinner. You’ve been staying just out of eye sight of the main road, peeking over the hills every now and then at it to make sure you’re still following the right way. After all, you wouldn’t want some traveler to see you and mention a young monk when they get to the village. Tonight you walked a ways away from the trail and so you could build a proper campfire, and now you're sitting in the crotch of a Juniper tree hacking off some of the sappier branches to use for longer burning in the night.
After you dropped the first branch to the ground, you looked around and found another suitable one with a few sap polyps on it. You brought the camp knife up over your head, and swung it down hard to chop through the wood. When suddenly you heard a rustling overhead, you looked up to see a bird’s nest falling towards you.
Adolescent Rae, roll a Dexterity save.
Raelle dropped her knife just in time to catch the bird’s nest. She had just enough time to sigh with relief before the owl attacked her.
The little round ball of angry feathers flapped and pecked at Raelle, then its talons slashed her arm as she put the nest down in the crook of a splitting branch.
She dodged around the owl and let herself fall out of the tree. It was a hard landing, but she was unhurt and back on her feet. She quickly pulled the camp knife out of the soft dirt and took off running.
Adolescent Raelle ran through the light evening. We see the setting sun framing the scene from the hill behind her, as her silhouette ran over the rocky hill. It’s the wet desert out here, a unique wilderness of stumpy pines and granite rock that were probably thrown during the war of some Giant king long ago. The dirt is dry, soft to touch, but it’s packed hard and soon began to hurt Raelle’s feet as she ran over it. A startled brown mouse ran from the thumpity-thud-thump sound, and burrowed in the crack of a sandstone boulder and she passed.
After several yards, Raelle comes to a stop near a rocky berm. She looked over shoulder to make sure the owl wasn’t chasing her, then set her pack and staff down on the ground. With a sigh, she dragged her stuff over to the side of a large rock and stopped to catch her breath. Adolescent Raelle looked around for more wood, stubbornly determined to make a campfire for that night. She walked around the rock and followed the berm until she found a few small junipers and set to work hacking off branches. Raelle let out a groan a few minutes in when she realized the wood over here was damp, like it had just rained here not long ago.
Determined to make it work, Raelle tore up stips of the long grass, and ripped off shreds of juniper bark, then hiked back to the boulder where she left her stuff. She gathered up some of the smaller red sandstone rocks into a rough circle and plopped herself down to make the fire. After a lot of swearing, and rubbing the wood dry, and wrapping the branches in the drier grass, the fire finally seemed to catch on the branches.
Raelle looked up at the stars as she chewed on her warmed leftover cony strips. In that moment she knew that this night somehow set a tone for her journey, that it could have gone very badly with her huddling on a hill in the dark struggling to sleep as she shivered the night away. But, she persevered and used her will to keep going, and she laid there warm that night as the gritty red stones first absorbed, then radiated the heat through the night. Good job, Adolescent Rae.
Ari Reaches up and pulls the Sitrige off her neck with her sharp claws. Then before it can fly away, her other hand slices at it with the dagger. The knife splits the red bat-thing open and a miniature five-second waterfall of coagulating blood dumps onto the floor before the Stirge falls to the ground twitching and dead.
🎲🗡️ A Midnight Caper . . .
Zavari, the goblin farmer stood over you and raised the cane in the air. You flinched but, instead of hitting you, he poked at a part of the door frame, which tilted up with a click, and the door swung open.
The farmer walked into the middle of the barn and turned to you with a sigh, “Alright you sobbing little way-fairer, What is it you need?” He asked with the tired air of a waiter at taking the order of a table that came in one minute and thirty seconds before closing time.
As you walked into the dirty little ground floor of the barn, we have a flashback within a flashback, to you standing around with the local gang you’re trying to impress. That’s the whole reason you've spent the last two nights trying to get into the Foelard barn. So hear you hear, standing in the alley talking with Tank, the leader of the gang (because every small town gang in the multiverse is led by someone who decides ‘Tank’ is a really cool tough name).
“So you wanna get into The Ivory Thorns, huh you little, tiff?” Tank asked.
The idiotic third in command giggled, “Tiff, ha ha, we could call her Tiff-Toff, cause them fancy clothes, huh Tank? Get it, cause her clothes look rick like some toff? It’s a good one huh, Tank?”
“Shut up Eddy.” (there is also an ‘Eddy’ in every one of these little town gangs that it trying way too hard)
“You know why we’re called the Ivory Thorns?” Tank asked, clearly proud of himself for coming up with it, “Cause we’re like those Karroo Acacia trees, if you tried to grab onto us, we’ll make you bleed!”
To Adolescent Zavari, this tough talk was absolutely working, to her fresh face in this new world, these little human and goblin teens were clearly street hardened bad asses, and she swallowed, “Yes, Tank, I understand.”
Tank was riding high on the power trip and smiled, “You want in good with us? You gotta do something to impress us, Something big, cause once you’re in we protect you, so you gotta earn it!”
“Yeah,” Eddy added, “Like them little yellow weaving birds that make those thatch nests around the acacia thorns in hive grouping, that's just like us huh, Tank?” (It’s strange, but the Eddy’s of the multiverse are all strangely knowledgeable about a handful of little subjects and they always confuse their superiors when they seem smart for a minute.)
“Uh,” Tank stared at the little goblin, “Yeah, exactly.” He shuffles his shoulders and re asserts himself. “So you wanna impress me, you gotta steal something good. And, I know just the thing.”
Back in the Foelard barn, you looked around, and swallowed nervously when you saw it hanging up over the back of the door. The silver giraffe shoe, its two halves hanging from the chain in the middle. The golden nail in the chain holding it to the wooden beam.
The farmer stares at the back of your head and coughs.
🎲🌿 Medical * Arcana * Schooling * Hospital . . .
Adolescent Cypress, give me a luck roll.
You were attempting to find the ‘bad’ linens out of respect for the good wife, but as you looked around you couldn’t tell what’s good or bad in there. So, you grabbed a few sunflower-yellow sheets and a stack of pale blue cotton blankets and ran back out the Father Mulch.
“Okay, good, set those down, and come here,” He said as you walked out the front door.
When you walked over to your teacher he stood over a young halfling whose head had been cracked open by a wooden beam, and you could see a gray something pulsing around some flecks of white. Make a Constitution save. Cypress glanced at the open head wound, but held themself just fine. In fact, he was a little proud of himself to realize he was worried about the patient surviving that grossed out by the gore.
“Okay, Cypress,” Father Mulch said, as he bit the cork out of a wooden vial, “Think fast, what spell should we cast here and now for this situation?”
“Spare the Dying, sir.” No hesitation whatsoever.
“Spar-” the older healer stopped, just for the blink of an eye, “Yeah.” He said, “Spare the Dying, you’re right.”
It was later in the day, after a lot of crying and panic and prayers that Father John Mulch sat with Cypress at the stairs of the Medical Arcana Schooling Hospital. He handed a glass bottle to his student. “That was the right call, Cypress, I’m impressed. To be honest, i think you saved three lives with that quick thinking. I was going to cast a healing spell in the moment, but you thought better. You remembered to stabilize everyone first, and then work to save them, and that's a good instinct. I was thinking like a hospital surgeon, you were thinking like a field medic.”
Cypress tried to keep a straight face, then hid a proud smile as he took a drink. Coolly he said, “Well, we were in the field, sir.”
Cypress swings at the Stirge sucking on his arm, but he staggers and misses. He’s feeling a bit woozy now as the Stirge sucked 5 more damage out of his arm, swelling its jiggly belly.
🎲✨ A hulking good time . . .
Adolescent Sorin made his way up the back stairs behind the orphanage, winding up them with the sexy Half-Orc woodcut clutched in his hand. Ok the second landing, he stepped onto the ledge of the next door building, and shimmied around the wall. It’s a familiar path to get to the rooftops here in the neighborhood, all the kids have taken it hundreds of times to go up and smoke for the first time, or have long talks about crushes, or just to pretend to run away for a few hours. At the next ledge, on the side of the Gray House, Sorin grabbed the old weather worn rope hanging there. He was about to climb up when he saw it.
NSFW, click to see
Someone pasted a poster of a Half-Orc woman in a sexy french maid outfit on the wall here. Next to it in dripping red letters they painted “GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS!” on three lines with an arrow pointing up to the roof. Sorin dug his nails into the paint and plaster and ripped the poster off the wall, then climbed up the rope to the roof.
When he pulled himself onto the roof, and stood up, Sorin was greeted by a Half-Orc cardboard cutout that waved at him and in a cheap falsetto said “Hello there hot young thing.” The cardboard cutout was one of the recruitment standees that the military used last spring, a muscular Half-Orc women in chain mail that used to say ‘we want everyone’ as part of a diversity hiring campaign by the city; but now someone crudely painted green skin of most of the chainmail to look like the woman was in a bikini and changed the writing to say ‘I want YOU!’
Sorin tackled the thing.
A few minutes later, Sorin and Matteo lay on the roof tiles laughing after a good-old-fashioned-brother-wrestle, bits of torn cardboard were scattered everywhere.
“Look, maybe I had a crush on here when I was seven, she was nice and took care of us and-”
“-and now you want to marry her by the time you're sevenTEEN!”
They both laughed, then Sorin elbowed the older boy softly in the ribs, “At least I didn’t get my first boner from the statue of a goddess.”
Guadacubé lunges towards whatever just bit a chunk off of him, doing 7 damage to Rae. He tries to engulf the meat he tastes there, but the same annoying metal that’s around his middle is around the meat and stopping him from engulfing the creature, annoying.
🎲🔔 A Night All Alone . . .
Raelle, it was about a week and a half later when you decided it was safe enough now for you to go into one of the little towns along the road. The landscape around you has started to change from the reddish canyon country (think American southwest), to low lying grasslands with tall trees that fan out at the top like mushrooms (think African savannas).
The sun was setting, and the gates were closed. The town was surrounded by a tall palisade wall with red and gray wooden logs lashed together and dirt piles up about knee high. Adolescent Raelle took a deep breath and knocked on the gates. A small iron hatch opened up at eye level and a husky voice asked, “Friend or foe!?”
‘Wow, people actually say that, I thought that was just something in books,’ Raelle thinks to herself. “Uh, friend?”
The gate swung open to her, “Peace and honor goodly knights and Sirs,” The man said, and bowed as he waved her into the little village, “May you be friendly with us, and may the fine city of Eeasritgyt be friendly to you.” The guard spoke it all with the forced jolliness of a telemarketer reading a pre-written script, and Raelle got the feeling that this was someone’s idea on how to make the little village seem like a big fancy city. It might actually work on someone completely new to the idea of towns and cities. Raelle is impressed. “Right then,” the guard said with a now-that’s-over-down-to-business tone, “You’ll need to surrender any weapons you have in order to enter the town.” He looks at the beautiful, hand carved, monk staff, “That includes the staff,” he said with the air of someone who has heard ‘that’s just my humble walking stick’ one too many times, before getting clubbed over the head.
With hesitant nervousness, Adolescent Raelle handed her staff over to the man and took the bronze coin with the number 19 on it.
🎲🗡️ A Midnight Caper . . .
“Um,” Zavari hesitated, trying to think of a way to get this man to leave her alone in his barn. She looked up at the loft, “Do you have any dried meat maybe?”
The goblin follows her gaze up the loft ladder, “Yeah,” He sighs, “go on up there and break yourself off a hunk, but then get out and don't let me catch you around here again.”
With the farmer still watching her, she tries a different tactic, “Could you, uh, get it for me? I’m uh… I’m scared of heights so the ladder, uh..”
Make a persuasion roll.
The farmer narrowed his eyes. “So, you want me to believe,” he grips his cane, “that you were planning to come in here to steal some meat,” he took a step forward, “but you're too scared to climb up and get it…”
Without another word, Zavari turned and climbed the ladder.
On several wood and wire racks were hunks of drying meat. Each one, a large slab with bone marks along it. Zavari is embarrassed, but had a thought as she looked at the meat. Each piece had a salt mark on the corner (a bit like a cheese stamp, a salt mark was an old fashioned way of putting a maker’s mark on dried meat. A stencil was placed on the meat and then filled in with very finely ground salt so it would kind of burn the mark into the meat, it also was a good way of establishing how long it had been curing.), ‘If I take one of these, at least I can show Tank that I got in here,’ she thought, ‘and who knows, maybe that will be enough to impress him’. It wasn’t.
Ari swings her Rapier at the Stirge on Cypress’s arm. He flinches and her blade sings through the air, missing by an inch.
Cypress casts Sacred Flame, but the little Stirge passes its Dex save and the holy fireball goes off an inch away as the Stirge drains Cypress to 0 Hp. He staggers trying to grip the wall, and the Stirge flies off, landing on Ari’s neck.
The Stirge drains Ari to 0 Hp. She staggers trying to grip the wall.
Ari and Cypress both fall to the ground unconscious.
Cypress passes their first Death saving throw, but Ari fails hers.
The Stirge jumps off Ari and flies at Rae.
Guadacubé senses the flapping meat overhead. He bunches his jelly and jumps, pulling the Stirge into himself.
Sorin casts Spider Climb on himself and runs up the wall, over the Cube and over to Ari and Cypress on the ground.
Rae picks up the tin shield Sorin dropped and braces herself against another attack from the cube.
Cypress passes their second Death saving throw, but Ari fails hers. So, one more success and Cypress is awake, one more failure and Ari is… well lets just hope she succeeds.
Sorin is about to try and drag Ari, but because i am a kind and benevolent DM he passes a knowledge check first and realizes that if he does that, she might die instantly. Instead he picks up Ari’s tin crate lid shield and braces himself to protect against the Cube coming after them.
Guadacubé can smell some fresh meat on the floor ahead and strains against the chain to get at it.
Rae rolls and 18 strength and successfully stops the Cube from going after her best friend.
Alright, death saves. Cypress you’re up first. Pass. Alright, now Ari-
Cypress’s eyes flash open, and he slaps his hand on Ari’s back. Then right before passing out again, he whispers. “Life is precious, never wade into the river without fighting the current.” They cast Spare the Dying on Ari. She is stable, without having to make another death saving throw.
And with that little cliffhanger, we call it for the week. What’s gonna happen? Who knows. Will Ari be ok? Well, As a DM i have a rule. I don’t kill off characters that have given me a backstory. . .
See you next week.
“Thunder rolled . . . It is said that the gods play games with the lives of men. But what games, and why, and the identities of the actual pawns, and what the game is, and what the rules are-who knows? Best not to speculate. Thunder rolled. . . . It rolled a six.”
—Terry Pratchett, “Guards! Guards!”
Table talk:
A quick apology, this was a very busy week for me at work, so this summary only went through 1 round of editing by Brooke, and i did not have time to content-edit it at all myself. So i’m sorry if anything is unclear this time around.
We had a hard out this week to get Brooke to a band concert, so there wasn’t any table talk. But i did give this extra quote, since she plays the Oboe.
“In fact the kind of music he really liked was the kind that never got played. It ruined music, in his opinion, to torment it by involving it on dried skins, bits of dead cat, and lumps of metal hammered into wires and tubes. It ought to stay written down, on the page, in rows of little dots and crotchets all neatly caught between lines. Only there was it pure. It was when people started doing things with it that the rot set in. Much better to sit quietly in a room and read the sheets, with nothing between yourself and the mind of the composer but a scribble of ink. Having it played by sweaty fat men and people with hair in their ears and spit dribbling out of the end of their oboe…well, the idea made him shudder. Although”
-Lord Havalock Vetinari —Terry Pratchett, “Soul Music”
