Thug Muggers in the Past 3/5/23
Table Talk:
Once again, a legal warning and disclaimer: This summary contains several time shifts, and perspective shifts, as well as shifts in the writing tense. Please be advised; this summary contains several instances of BACKSTORY. We cannot guarantee all segments are free of allergens like tragedy, political despair or, the big sads. This is our last big backstory session, but it does contain some troubling ideas, so read on at your own risk, and once again, watch your step around shifting tenses and suddenly changing time zones. CONTENT WARNING (CW): Reader, a second big warning, there is a scene coming up (the third of Ari’s backstory scenes) which contains xenophobia and racism particularly against immigrants. I hate this kinda scene. I usually try hard to keep racism and other bigotries out of my fantasy worlds. That's why i consider Orcs and Goblins etc. to be full characters and not mobs or monsters; because all too often (intentionally or not) it becomes an allegory. But, this was a crucial part to Ari’s backstory, and so we played it out, despite my hesitations. I am truly sorry if it is upsetting. As i was told several times during the session (when i tried to back down from it), this was the character of the villain and i hope people see that as separate from any of us. Thank you.
Small spoilers for one thing below. It is important to know that when writing her backstory, Sarah / Rae got a magic item. The headband she got from her best friend, Shay, when leaving the monastery (and later tied to her new magic staff), is actually a magic item that she can sense, and that she is always aware of. There are some other stats and a downside, but we’ll save that for when we talk about everyone’s backstory bonuses. That’s all that matters for the story below though.
“Among the many- colored threads that weave the tapestry of one's life...The meeting of two people...is a part of the pattern of destiny.”
—Lee Yun Hee, “Demon Diary Volume 2”
🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿
Chapter 14: We Solved your Gelatinous Cube Puzzle!
🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿 Chapter 14: We Solved your Gelatinous Cube Puzzle!
At this point in history, mail and letters are still using the very elaborate system of ‘hand it to a person going in the right direction and ask them to pass it on’. Jehquin Gillmawcker has actually been doing this a lot lately, she’s a caravan guard, and has started offering a letter carrying service on the side. 2 Copper Pennies a letter and she’ll carry them into Nibiru for you and bring them to The Post. She'll even write extra information on the envelope like what direction the destination is, so it has a better chance of getting there. Business has been good lately, and when she gets back into the city, she heads straight for The Post. The Post is actually five posts. Five thick logs in a line, holding up a small shack on top. The posts are covered in little nail spikes and bits of string. Letters, notices, envelopes, and the occasional wanted posters, or job hiring notices hang all around for travelers and merchants to take with them wherever they're going. Each post has a brass inlaid sign hanging at its top; “Nibiru City” in the middle with “North”, “East”, "South” and “West-Notices-Other'' on the sides. Jehquin goes around the posts to the stairs in the back, and walks up to the office above. She ducks her head going in and taps the little bell marked “Post Master”. She smiles when she sees Demilinen come to the desk. She’s gotten to know him pretty well now that she’s been doing this regularly.
“I’ve got a new batch, Postmaster, and of course, here’s your cut.” She hands a few coins down to him, and they make some idle small chat before she heads back out.
Demilinen checks the town names against a large map on the wall, then uses a potato stamp to mark each one (East, North, Nibiru, South or WNO). He climbs down the hatch under his little desk to the posts outside and starts hanging them up. On the “West/Notices/Other” post he finds an empty stop under a wanted poster. He doesn’t know this, but the poster is fake, the whole thing is a coded message in Thievescant about someone called ‘Big Z’ or maybe ‘Zari’. He loops a piece of string around the corner of one of the new envelopes, the one with the geometric temple symbol and the letters R.E.W.
In the sewers under the streets and buildings on the other side of the City, the monk Rae Woodmaker, and her friend Zevari, are walking up a corridor with their new companions. They’re going back to Pulgrok’s office to talk to him and get paid.
On our way through the hallways and corridors, we detour off to a familiar side room with an extra large pipe running up through the roof to the street, and down through the floor to the level below. Next to it is a familiar monogram with a hollow outline of a coin.
“I’ll stand watch in the hall again,” Cypress says as Ari and Rae walk up to Devin’s mark, “I don’t have anything I need to buy or sell this time.”
“Nonono, Cypress you must have something,” Sorin stutters and backs away from the mark on the hall. “I’ll stand watch this time.”
When Sorin tries to walk out of the room, he encounters Cypress just staring up at him, and a flat montone, “No.”
“I’ll-uh-I-I-I, uh I’ll just stand with you then.” He says and carefully positions himself just out of sight from the mark, around the corner of the wall.
Rae puts a Copper Penny in the divot in the wall. The divet gently gives way and when Rae pulls her thumb back, the coin seems to slide into a hidden pocket in the wall, like a gumball machine or those really old arcade game coin slots. Ari and Rae here a cheery little plinkity-plonkity tune like someone playing a tiny cheap dulcimer, and then nothing.
They wait.
Ari coughs.
There is a long green lizard head right next to Ari’s face, and it asks, “What exactly is it we’re waiting for?”
At the exact same time a long green lizard head right next to Rae’s face asks, “What exactly is it we’re waiting for?”
Startled, both of them almost jump a little but are gently stopped by the taloned hand resting on each of their far shoulders.
“So, my friend, what is it we’re after today?” Both heads ask in unison to Ari and Rae.
“Um,” Ari said, trying not to be taken aback, “You were going to get me some arrows I think?”
“Ah yes, of course.” A third arm comes up between Ari and Rae with a clawed hand holding 2 large bundles of arrows. “2 Gold each for a bundle.” The lizard head in front of Ari smiles, or at least displays a very nice collection of very pointy teeth.
“Uh, did you have some vials for me?” Rae asks.
Once Ari takes the 2 bundles of arrows, the hand in between them disappears, and then reappears holding five very small bottles. “3 copper, a bottle, my good friend.”
Rae takes all five and then puts 1 Silver and 5 Coppers in the waiting claw.
“Will that be all?”
“Did you, um, find a price for that bottle of Gelatinous Cube Ooze?” Rae asks nervously, holding out the vial in question.
“Ah yes, I did find a buyer.” The hand emerges with a small pile of glittering coins. “11 Gold.”
Rae and Devin make the exchange and with a “Have a pleasant day, please.” The head, and the clawed hands on their shoulders are gone.
Ari and Rae simultaneously relax their shoulders and let out a sigh of relief.
A shadow in front of Cypress resolves into the familiar shape of Devin, and Sorin feels two twin tails curling and wrapping around his legs.
One of his hands goes to his chest, and one head lowers down to Cypress with a respectful nod. “Good day to you, Sir.”
“Hello again, Devin,” Cypress says with a friendly smile. “I have two jokes for you today, if you want them.”
An eager hunger gleams in Devin’s eye and Cypress asks, “What do you call a whale with no underwear?”
“Hmmm…” Devin pauses with his claw to his lips, briefly looking exactly like a famous reptilian philosopher from his youth. “I used to do business with a whale over on the far western shores of the continent back before the Great Scrub… but I just called him Tony.”
“A Free Willie.” Cypress grins.
Devin’s body shakes with perverse glee and his tails tighten on Sorin, “O-o-o-oh, that’s good. A little perverse perhaps, but very good.”
“And, where does a Cleric of Pholtus go if he’s broken the law?”
“Hmm… I remember the old Pholtus Temple in the Norkenshery cliffs, but…”
“To Prism!”
Devin grins.
“But don’t worry, It’s a LIGHT sentence.”
Devin’s booming laugh slowly fades into silence and the tails curled around Sorin’s legs slowly uncoil and slide away.
When there is no more sign of Devin, Sorin whimpers, “Ari, hold me.”
“Ew, what, no.” Is his only reply as everyone walks past him, and back into the corridors.
There is no clever fade back or anything that i could come up with for these backstories, so we just dive straight in with Cypress.
🎲🌿An Expected Journey . . .
It’s a year or two after the soldier died in Cypress’s arms. They spent some time in the woods, grieving alone, then went back to the cloister to study and improve on their healing skills. Now he was feeling that familiar ache in his toe nails, and the halflings say. That good old wanderlust, the itch on the heels that only unfamiliar roads can scratch. They were in the office of the high priest, sitting cross legged and half naked with him in the reflecting pool, the small holywater waterfall fountain pouring over their shoulders as they talked, and he said, “Well Cypress, if you think you are healed enough, then you have my blessing.” (Cypress had never told anyone the trauma that brought them here, but surrounded by so many healers and clerics, he wasn’t surprised that they sensed his pain). In a more formal voice he asked, “So then Seedling Witchhazel, where do you intend the wind to blow you, or the Animal to drop you, so that you may grow and spread our grace?”
“I intend to go north.”
The high priest nodded and said, “Then go like a seed on the wind, in meandering spirals and curves. Do not take a straight line seeking a destination, but flutter from place to place. Choose destinations and times of rest at random, for those random thoughts will truly be Sheela’s guiding will upon you.”
Cypress nodded and stood up from their communion in the holywaters. They bowed their respects to the high priest and left the chamber.
Back in his room, Cypress gathered up his belongings. It took almost no time at all, and he was almost surprised to see that, not only did everything he owned still fit in his trusty little pack; but in fact, most of it was still in the pack. It seemed that even with all their time here they had never truly unpacked, just pulled something out when they needed it, and put it back in the bag afterwards, so they knew right where it was.
After a few minutes of double checking empty cabinets and drawers, Cypress reached under his robe and touched a familiar lump of fabric there. Then he walked out to the main gates.
By the grand entrance, a dwarf in the robes of a Sheela Cleric stood holding a bundle wrapped in large flat leaves. “His honor, The Flower, said to give this to you to protect you on your journey. Think of it as a gift for all the work you’ve done helping us here.”
That night at sunset by a growing campfire Cypress unwrapped the leaves. Inside were a pair of shiny new pauldrons. They were made of polished leather straps that were hex-woven into a kind of flat braided Lamellar. The strands were knotted on the outer edge, and hung down like thick leather fringe on fancy epaulets. Underneath them was a note. Cypress read it and smiled, then cooked a sausage on a stick.
“Remember, every seed needs a hard shell to keep it safe.”
🎲✨It’s Time We Had ‘The Talk’ . . .
Sorin was sitting up, awake in bed. He was in the older youth’s room in the orphanage, and was holding a letter. It’s dark, but he’d read it so many times now, he could trace the letters without any light.
“Sorin (surname undefined),
Our Scouting Master, Krawlell The Fearose, saw you working in the Ironsquare, and informed us of your potential in the fields of Applied Alchemy and Related Magiks. It is our deepest wish that you should attend a lecture in the visitors hall of the University of Magic and High Understanding or The Natural Order of the Universe, followed by an examination for entry. Should you pass this examination, our bursar will discuss with you the ‘Endowment For The Talented Peasant’
(penciled in next to the is a note saying ‘I know, but it’s a very old title and the law states we can’t change the name for another 3 generations.’)
Which would grant you a scholarship to become Vizardo Del Studencia (a wizard in training) at the University. Please attend, and see myself: High Colonel of Student Affairs, Borigmous Cavinder Miesling Etmy The Fourth, on the morning of the 5th oxen Celebration Day.” (a city holiday).
He set the letter down and sighed, trying AGAIN to go to sleep, ‘How am I gonna tell Matteo?’ He just got his Clerical Apprenticeship accepted last week, and he’s been talking every day. ‘He kept talking about getting you into the Clerical Apprenticeship with him, and now this… How am I going to tell him?’ Sorin sat up in bed and ‘read’ the letter again.
A string of swear words flew through Sorin’s hyperactive brain as he chastised himself for not being asleep. He rolled onto his side. He thought about what to do. He rolled onto his other side. He thought ‘stop, Sorin, you need to sleep!’ A moment later he was staring at the ceiling playing out scenarios in his head. He covered his face with the pillow. He rolled back on his side. He squeezed his eyes shut trying to will it ino making him sleep. He rolled onto his back.
He finally gave up and quietly got out of bed. He tugged on his pants and threw on a less-dirty tunic and belt trying to be quiet, then left the room.
Downstairs in the kitchen he grabbed a Breadberry.
(Roughly the size of a hand, a Breadberry is a snack invented and grown by The Logg and Kell Alchemist Collective. They are long flat bread-like fruits with a gooey center and a freckled glaze-like top. Usually people recommend warming them before eating, but they’re just fine without it. They are usually sold in shiny silk baggies with a pair inside, or boxes of eight to 12 baggies. The regular Breadberries are a pinkish strawberry/cherry flavor, but recently the he Logg and Kell Alchemist Collective have been experimenting and have made a new Cinnamon breed which tastes like brown sugar and maple syrup).
At the door, with the second Breadberry held in his mouth, Sorin tugged on his boots. When he did, the little patch he had glued over his left big-toe popped off. He sighed, wiggling the toe in the open air. ‘One more thing to fix’ he thought to himself and walked out of the orphanage.
🎲🔔A Relaxing Morning . . .
It’s been almost a couple months now, and this is the third village Raelle has stopped at. The road has split off a few times in different directions, and she just kept going straight. She had been walking for so long, she’s left the familiar red sandy scrubland desert behind, and now she’s deep in the heart of these arid grassland plains, and plateaus. The village before her was the largest city Raelle had ever seen. The out walls were real stone and they were so high Raelle almost couldn’t even jump and reach the top of them if she didn’t try very hard. The city was so big, that the walls stretched away into the distance further that she could see… if she kinda knelt down and got right next to them and squinted.
It was early morning and Raelle had just woken up and got down from the guard house rooftop she was sleeping on. She had given them her staff last night when she came into town. But, by now she’s not worried, Raelle had now done this a couple of times and knew right where it was, due to the magical headband she’d tied onto it.
Raelle’s feet hit the dirt with a soft puff of dust, and for the first time in one of these towns, she thought she might actually stick around for a bit and see what’s here instead of just walking off into the distance. She yawned and stretched and looked around. “I wonder if a big city like this has a marketplace?” She thought aloud with an eager gleam in her eyes.
Just then she saw a Guard come out the front door of the gatehouse with a ‘hello hello hello what’s all this then’ look on his face. She smiled and waved good morning to him. Then she walked away down the path.
“Maybe I should have asked that local for directions” she said to the open air. But, after a little bit of walking, she saw the large open space a few blocks away. At first she was proud of herself for finding it all on her own, but then a thought struck her and she turned around to look behind her. “Wow,” she said to the zero people in the empty street who weren’t around to hear her, “that’s ingenious. People in the cities really are clever!” She looked at the main road she’s standing on, and at the little side streets and paths that branched off from it. “The way all these little paths all feed into each other and lead you to the center of the town,” she smiled, “that's so cool.”
Rae walked into the amazing market at the heart of the big city, and gawked at all the almost tens of stalls scattered around the edge of the cobbled square. On anyone less innocent, her expression would probably have been taken for sarcastic mocking and have earned her a patriotic punch in the mouth; but, on Rae’s guileless honest face, the shock and awe just showed her innocent child-like amazement.
The city square measured a little under 2 blocks to a side. Raelle didn’t know this, but it actually did resemble a famous bazaar twice a year on market days, when the traders from all the counties around and the craftspeople and farmers came with them. On those days it was a mess of impromptu table tops, and animal sounds, and a press of bodies that really made life easy for the local gang to learn pickpocketing skills. But today, all thirteen traders were sitting behind their tables either reading, mending, or doing some other form of busy work as they waited for something interesting to happen.
🎲🗡️Caught Between a Cage and a Hard Place . . .
It had been a few months now and Zevari, sometimes ‘Big Z’ was actually making a bit of a name for herself in the Ivory Thorns gang. Twice now she’d actually got to sit next to Tank in the clubhouse when they planned something. She was outside the clubhouse tonight talking with Skabber about a rumor.
“Yeah, Z, I heard Eddy tell him myself. And as soon as Tank heard about it, he said he’d give a big reward to anyone who manages to steal it.”
Zevari’s devil eyes glittered in the moonlight, “A magic monk staff, that’s so cool.” She turned and looked skeptically at him, “But, wait, how did Eddie find out about it?”
“He says he heard his dad talking about it,” Shrugged Skabber.
Zevari dry washed her hands like a cartoon villain. A magic monk staff locked in the gatehouse of the guards. Yeah… that would do it. That would cement her reputation as a master thief for sure. Tank would have to make her co-leader, ‘aww man this is gonna be so cool!‘
She turned to Skabber, and exercised her still-new privilege of her status in the gang, “You, keep watch tonight, “ then dry-washing her hands a second time she added, “I’m going to do something fun.” With the Zevari slunk off into the shadows.
Most young rogues actually do try to SLINK in the night. They inadvertently advertise themselves to everyone around by quickly ducking behind shrubs and tip-toeing on roof tops. In fact, a lot of the foolish youngsters in the Irvoy Thorns did get caught this way. But, Zevari had always had a natural skill and grace at slinking, she didn’t crouch down everytime a bird whistled, or tip-toed between noisy floor boards. Zevari just walked casually, and almost by coincidence, always seems to be in a dark shadowy spot. If you thought you saw someone in the corner of your eyes, you’d turn and look, it’s just the shade of an overhanging roof, or it was just the way a tree branch was shaped. She uses all her graceful guise and cunning that other rogues might put in skillsets like lock-picking to move silently through the world, completely unnoticed.
Zevari walked like this from the clubhouse to the square, then across the square, around some houses, passed the smithy where the windows still glowed in the night but no hammering was going on, along the east wall, behind the old Stunmuckers’s stable, and along the narrow next to the guard house. She crept slowly along this narrow gap between the stables and the guard house, and eventually came to the window of the front room. She quickly glanced in, and ducked back behind the wall. She smiled in the darkness. Eddie’s dad, Jonathan, was on watch tonight, and he was sitting in the wooden chair behind the desk… snoring.
His face was turned away and was laying on the desk as he dreamed of arresting sheep for loitering.
In the sewers, the thug muggers are walking along the corridors and Sorin is explaining about Matteo. He’s been so nervous about his meeting with his ‘older brother’ tomorrow, and he keeps asking for advice. Eventually Zevari gave in and told the poor boy to explain about his relationship with Matteo so they could offer advice.
A very grateful Sorin has explained all about growing up in the orphanage, and about Matteo protecting him as they grew up. He’s talked about the pranks they used to pull on eachother (refusing to give any details when Rae asks nonchalant questions about what Matteo did to embarrass him). And now, he’s telling the story of their falling out, and how it went when he told Matteo about his decision to go to the University.
🎲🌿 -An Expected Journey-
But first, back to Cypress’s past. He was a few weeks into his journey now, having stopped in big cities, and empty plateaus. He even got yelled at by some church members of a Religion who think that nature should be burned down to worship hammered metal discs. He’d been camping for a few days outside a small Villa, that was really just a couple of small farms and the few houses of worker families alongside a few couple workshops and a stable.
His campsite was really just a drop cloth tied over his bed roll, and a few stones propped up to make a little fire ring. After all, he needed a place to cook up his mushrooms and his bacon. It’s one thing to live in harmony with nature and have a small footprint on the land, but toast is toast and the bacon wasn’t going to cook itself. The little camp was just a few yards off from the road where he could see and be seen by travelers coming and going in case anyone needed his help. As a way of advertising himself and his trade, he had propped up his staff up in a little stone cairn at the top of the little hill. And he left a sprig of holy holly tied to the staff with long flowing ribbons to show his deity and his practice.
It was the third morning, as he was packing his bags, and re-scattering the stones from the cairn and fire ring, that the good wife came to him.
She was nervous, and clutched her hands in her apron, she didn’t say anything as Cypress moved the rocks back to their random natural spots. When he was done and came over, he got a good look at her. He saw that she was the spitting image of someone from his past. This good wife was just exactly the taller human version, of a lady he had once stolen linens from to use as bandages. He instinctively readied himself to catch her if she fainted.
🎲✨-It’s Time We Had ‘The Talk’-
The City of Nibiru’s Grand Library is a little tiny tower near the arena. It’s 5 stories tall and each floor is a miniature maze of book shelves cleverly turned and positioned to grant just a little more space to cram some more books.
Sorin pulled on the handles underneath the sign marked “Hours: learning is always open and always free”, and opened the front door. Inside, Hier Fooglesiten was asleep over his desk. The little Gnome librarian was in his hammock hung between two shelves, hanging over the desk, and had a little cardboard sign on a string that said, “We cannot guarantee the safety of anyone who wakes the librarian without the proper safety equipment” above a drawing of a dragon spewing flames on a knight's helmet.
Sorin smiled to himself and walked the winding path around the first floor to the bookshelf with the ladder rungs built into its sides. He pulled himself up the ladder to the second floor, and then moved between the zigzagging shelves. Eventually he came to a familiar bookcase with a hanging wooden sign marked “Sci-Mag” and 3 horizontal lines next to a letter “H”. He knelt down and thumbed his way between volumes until he found it.
Sorin pulled out his favorite book, and then leaned against the wall to read a passage.
“...So we observe that while the pendulum swings, the areal bisection creates a lingering elliptical aurora in space as defined by its wake. However, we can also observe, using the Rathenmiester method of calculating inertial fields in time, that there is a secondary aurora defined by the forward path of the swing which has yet to occur on this swing. This predictive divide, or so called ‘anti-wake’, is based on the probability factor of the pendulum continuing to swing. Unlike the retroactive time bisection of the first wake, the strength of this divide is dependent on a factor of reverse time. As noted by Krovalliss in his seminal work ‘Defining Chronologic Inertia In The Movement of The Elements’, the longer the pendulum has been swinging, the more the universe expects it to remain swinging. And thus if we notation the collapsing potential between probability as ‘Y’ and the actual at ‘X’ we can extract…”
– “A Collection Of Treatise On The Transference Of Causal Energies; Section 5: The Debate On Using Magical Leverage Using The ‘Wing Span’ Theorem From The Period Of The 3rd Awakening” - ‘Howard The Tall’s Postulate On Expanding Time To Reduce Size Without Reduction Of Mass’, Page 3
Sorin smiled as the early sunlight began to spill over the city walls and into the little library window. ‘This is it,’ he thought to himself, ‘I may not understand it, but I want to. Who was Rathenmiester, and what method did he make? What does it do or change?’ Sorin felt the familiar tingling needle pricks on his fingertips whenever he started to reach his mind out towards magical ideas. ‘I know he’ll understand,’ he thought confidently, ‘I know he loves me, so I know he’ll support me, and respect that this is the stuff I love!’
Sorin was standing there in a confident pose by the book case, then his shoulders sagged when he thought, ‘Now just to figure out how to tell him.’
🎲🗡️-Caught Between a Cage and a Hard Place-
Zevari, peeked over the rough wood of the windowsill, poking just one eye and one horn over the edge to peer in. ‘Good, Eddie’s dad is still asleep’. She slowly stood up, so that the bushes around her didn’t make any noise. Her soft leather glove tested the windowsill, she heard the ccrrrrr- and pulled her hand back before it could make the ‘eeeeek’. Zevari reached a hand up to the top of the window frame and gently tugged. It was solid and didn’t make any noise. She pulled her body up and into the window.
Just as Zevari swung herself into the room, and as she was about to put her food down on the floor, she heard some sound on the roof, like a bag of flour rolling over. She looked up at the roof and winced her eyes, ‘what was that,’ then she looked over at the guard and loudly cursed inside her head, clamping her teeth down around her tongue. Eddie’s dad was ‘hmpfh-huh-wha-what’-ing his way awake and she could see his boot coming down off the desk as he started to stand.
She quickly shifted her weight right, then left, then right again, and tossed herself back out the window. She landed with a soft rustle of leaves and immediately tried to crawl backwards into the branches of the bush.
Zevari shrunk down in her bush, and spent a good half hour thinking up new curse words for whatever bird was on the roof and woke up Eddie’s dad. ‘Is glumf you, a thing?’
The next few hours were uneventful as Zevari lay in the bushes between the guard house and the Stunmuckers’s stable. She poked her head up from time to time to check in, but Jonathon was up now and moving around the room. Zevari dozed in her little building gap, and watched the sliver of stars changing between the eves.
Around the time the little crack of stars was disappearing into the pale orange dawn, Zevari heard the thud!
She jerked herself upright and grimaced at the noise of little bushes. She cursed herself for forgetting to stay quiet.
Then, the sound she was fearing, the sound of iron-toed boots on floorboards walking to the window. Another sound, but this one was outside, like feet falling on hard dirt and some stupid girl saying “I wonder if a big city like this has a marketplace?” There was the sound of a guard turning around, the creak of the door frame, and then an angry harumph a muttering about “stupid foreigners”.
‘Yup,’ Zevari thought with an inward eye roll, ‘that’s Eddie’s dear old dad alright.’ Not for the first time, she wondered how Eddie, a decent kid who tried to read and learn whenever he could (even if most of it didn’t stick), could be related to this walking cartoon bigot.
Hearing the guard’s angry muttering she peeked over the window sill again. Jonathon was standing at the open doorway. Zevari bit her lip and silently begged, and yes, yes, yes! Jonathon took a step out of the guard house.
In an instant, she was out of the bush and through the window. She turned to the rear wall and grinned. There it was, the weapons locker, it was a stout wooden cabinet with bars on the top half so you could see all the hooks and brackets inside. It had a large iron lock on the front. Hanging inside were the truncheons the guard used, a few swords, and the Captain’s Parade Rapier that she wore and showed off on festival days, when she also wore the big helmet with the plumes on it. And there, resting against the side, was a tall stick made of an unfamiliar greenish-white woold. It had a brass ring hammered over the end of it, and the middle was wrapped with some sort of decorative cloth wrapping, like a fancy dress fabric, or a pirates headband.
Zevari glanced out the empty door, then quickly knelt down at the lock. She worked her picks in and heard a click. She pulled, but the lock stayed closed. She twisted her picks and jiggled and heard a thud. She looked at the lock, surprised; they’d never made that sound before. She stared. Another thud. What? Two more.
A hand fell hard on Zevari’s shoulder and pulled her arm back from the cabinet. The cabinet shook as he pulled her away and she saw the prized staff wobble.
“I got you, you filthy little hell rat!”
🎲🔔-A Relaxing Morning-
As Raelle Woodmaker was making her way across the square when she felt something. It was like a tugging sensation in her brain, like a finger curling around her pinky, but inside her skull. She turned and looked back the way she came, staring in the direction of her staff, the direction that feeling came from. She stared and it happened again. This time, a back and forth rocking motion, like her staff was shaking from side to side.
Raelle took off in a sprint, not sure why, but not wanting to risk anything. She ran around the little alleyways thinking feverishly, ‘maybe an earthquake?’ She turned a corner at speed, following the beacon in her head. Fed up with the twists and turns, she jumped off a rain barrel and onto a roof, then ran in a straight line toward the watchhouse. A couple houses away she slowed down.
Everything… looks… fine… so why…
She stopped on the edge of the stable roof, right next to the guardhouse, and listened.
“Oh this is too good!” she heard a voice shouting and couldn’t tell if it was furious or overjoyed, “It’s perfect! I can’t wait to tell the captain. This time, we’re gonna have you out of here for good! Stealing city property! And weapons, at that!”
Raelle carefully stepped over to the guardhouse roof.
“I can see it all perfectly now. You were planning to arm that little group you’ve been brainwashing haven’t you!? Admit it!”
Raelle slowly leaned out over the edge.
Then she heard a quieter, younger voice, “No, S-Sir it’s not like th-”
“Silence!” the guard yelled, “Don’t say another word, I'm not letting you worm your dark horns over my brain, you little social polyp!”
Raelle slowly lowered her head down to the window and looked in. She could see her staff safely locked up in the big cabinet they put it in last night when they gave her the brass token with the #8 on it.
The guard was pacing back and forth. “I’m calling the captain, then we’ll see if the Alderman is still so friendly to your family and their infestation in my town.” He pulled a little red glass rod out of his shirt, then leaned down. There was a young Tiefling girl on the floor with her hands behind her back. The guard grinned and broke the glass tube right in front of her face. A little puff of red vapor came out before the breeze blew it away.
Before this next part i want to remind the reader that Rae has a -1 intelligence modifier.
“Hey,” Raelle’s upside down face said from the window, “Whatcha doin’?”
🎲🌿 -An Expected Journey-
On the hill outside the little villa, Cypress was staring up at the good wife, hoping she wouldn’t collapse on him.
“Um,” she asked, nervously twisting her hands in her white apron like a little child. “You’re a healer right?”
“Yes, ma’am, I am.” Cypress replied. Normally he wouldn’t go in for a term like ‘ma’am’ without knowing someone better, but he looked at her outfit and decided that the title might put her at ease a little bit, ‘anyone wearing that much flowery lace and a dress like a children's fable, with the apron covered in cross stitched hearts is advertising ‘ma’am’ like a road sign.’
“So,” she said, dragging each word out, “You… could heal… my husband?”
‘Okay…’ Cypress thought and mentally shifted gears. Out loud they said, “Well, ma’am it’s possible. Though, of course I’d have to know what’s wrong with him…” They trailed off meaningfully.
The good wife gulped and Cypress got a flash of bedside-manner insight.
“Tell you what,” they continued, “I’m just breaking down my camp here. So, if you don’t mind of course, why don’t you just tell me about it while I pack up?” He gave her a friendly smile and saw relief that washed over her as she realized she wouldn’t have to look him in the eye when she spilled the family beans.
Cypress began slowly picking up tools and gear and packing them away, working at a snail's pace to give her time to talk it out.
“Well, um, your Healership, you see-”
“Cypress, if you don't mind, ma’am, no need for fancy titles with me.” Internally he rolled his eyes at himself hating people the ol’-west doctor.
“Cypress, I see, thank you, well, um… It’s my husband’s um... his pump rod you see…”
“Pumping rod?” Cypress asks, and the woman blushes.
“His, um spear, your Grace.” She swallows and barrels ahead, “He was hurt in the last big skirmish out here. He was defending our Villa, when an orgbore charged just below the hips and..” She trailed off and Cypress nodded knowingly. “Well you see, Sir, er uh, Cypress, we’ve been trying to plant our family for a long time now but his plow has no seeds you see…and now…” She swallowed loudly, “...and now I’m pregnant.”
“Well,” Cypress said with a congratulatory smile, “it sounds like it’s all in order, he doesn’t need my help to-”
“It’s not!” she blurted out in a panic. “It’s bad, mister. See when the bore hit him it removed things and well…nothing ever comes out of him but water no more.”
“But here you are pregnant?” Cypress said, and rolled a health check. Yes, he could see it, some glowing radiance in the cheeks, swelling of the chest, the apron might even have so much cross stitching on it to distract from a growing bulge, she did indeed seem to be pregananant.
She turned her face away in shame and nodded. “Yes, I am, and I need your help to fix my husband so the child will become his.”
Oh.
Well then.
Um…
Sorin wanna jump in here and give Cypress some time to think?
🎲✨-It’s Time We Had ‘The Talk’-
“Hier Fooglestein?” Sorin asked in a raised voice.
After a moment of no response he poked his head down the ladder hole and looked. The little man was still dozing in his hammock with his Kroog The Conqueror plushie in his arms. Sorin stood back up and walked to the spot right over Heir Fooglestein’s desk.
“Sorry, Sir, but I really need your advice,” Sorin whispered, then dropped the thick heavy book on the floor.
After hearing the familiar “heh!, Wha!?, Who’s there!? - Get outta my camp ‘r I’ll stab yer liver!” of the old librarian waking up, Sorin re-shelved the book and made his way down the ladder.
“Oh good morning, Hier Fooglestein. ” Sorin said guiltily, “Hey, since you’re up, could I ask for your advice?”
The two character inspirations for this man
The old gnome grunted and swung out of bed. “You didn’t happen to drop any books right above my head that might just conveniently have woken me up huh?” He said standing barefoot on the desk, his white haired toes tapping. One milky eye peered towards the top of the doorframe, but his good eye was looking straight at Sorin, and the orange pupil seemed to shimmer like a dancing flame. Fooglestein’s eyebrow lifted and a smile cracked on his face. “Alright lad.” He yawned and stretched. When he did Sorin could see the shirtless body behind almost 6 feet of tapering white gnome beard. His skin was hard and leathery, and stretched over a chaotic road-map of veins and sinew. The old librarian was peppered with scars and burns and slash marks, some of them occasionally bisecting tattoos that were now so faded, each one looked like a ghost of a tattoo that died and went to tattoo heaven.
He swept all seven of his gnarled bony fingers through his gray mohawk, tying and tucking it around itself in a flat bun that would have made good padding under an iron helmet. Then he sat down on the edge of the desk, and dangled his feet over the edge, they each had stark white sandals lines across them where no sun had clearly ever been allowed, but they were otherwise and tan and as tough as the rest of him (one toe knuckle had a tattoo with the old Dwarvish rune for ‘put this in your mouth’ but Sorin didn’t know Dwarvish Runes). He swung his feat and his beard in lazy back and forth circles, waiting for Sorin’s questions.
The two character inspirations for this man
“Well, Hier Fooglestein,” Sorin said sheepishly, “I need your advice again.” He stared at the couple of teeth that never quite managed to retreat into Fooglestien’s mouth, one seemed to have a sharp stone on it.
“Sorin lad,” He leaned in towards the young man’s face, “ya mus’ know my advice by now.” Then he screamed a battle cry, “Grab’em by da nadgers! Nut’em ‘n gut ‘em ‘n scream for glory!” He roared in a voice that was clearly more at home on a battlefield, than the sleepy little library.
Sorin blinked in the face of the grinning librarian and tried to blink away the smell of charred steak from the old man’s breath. “Um, it’s a different situation this time?” He mentally added a tally mark to the number of times Hier Fooglestein had given him that exact advice; to date, he had yet to use it.
“Ah,” the old gnome said, leaning back with a serious expression on his face. He pointed to the shaved side of his head, and the blurry tattoo of a brain there, “a thinkin’ prob’m huh?”
“Yessir.” Sorin pulled out the well-worn letter and handed it over. See, I was to go to the college, but then my brother, Matteo, you remember I told you about him and he came in with me to look at…” Sorin rambled on, explaining every little detail as Fooglestein treated him like a white noise machine, and read the letter.
“Too many wizards already,” Fooglestien said, handing him back the note. “All o’ ‘em sit’in’ them towers an’ pokin’ holes in the universe. An’ then what? They need somon’ bigg’r ‘n’ strong’r ta come kick th’ door down an’ lock of the big glowing hole an’ steal the gemstones so’s they’s can’t do it again! HA! That’s what!”
“Mind you...” He wiggled a finger in the white tufts of hair spilling out of an ear. “They can be useful… not as useful as healers, but still…”
“Alright!” He smacked his hands on the desk and stood up, “I’ve thought about y’u’re prob’m an’ here’s my official advice, so listen up.” He pronounced it ‘oh-fish-ailse and walked back and forth on his desk acting out a little scene. “Ya joins the church. But you learns a bit a magik on the sly. Ya waits till they takes ya to the big bad holy temple where they done all them sacrificings, then when it’s just you ‘n’ one other priest on guard a’fore dawn.” Fooglestien darts back and forth pantomiming and talking fast, “Ya choke ou’ the other fella, getch’yer number three crowbar from whers ya hidd’n it under yer pants, an’ pry out the big ruby eyes on the snake statue, grab the princess by the waste, throw ‘er ov’r yer shoulder an’ nick it away into the woods!”
“Um,” Sorin tried to wedge this around his ideas of what’s happening, “What about Matteo?”
“Oh yeah the priest boy, yeah.” Fooglestein thought for a second and held up a ‘eureka’ finger, “Leave him tied up in the back room with a note stuffed in his mouth sayin’ he’s the one what done it all! That way their God’ll punish him for makin’ you join some weird religion, and not punish you fur nickin’ the rubies an’ the girl!”
Sorin stared at the old man and couldn’t stop himself from grinning. “Thank you, Hier Fooglestein, you always know just what to say.”
As he walked out of the library, Sorin thought to himself, ‘I hope someday I meet someone as cool as Hier Fooglestein.’ and a little further down the street, ‘Wait do I have a crush on my local librarian… Well that’s normal at my age isn’t it?
‘Isn’t it…’
🎲🗡️. . . Caught Between a Cage and a Hard Place
“Oh this is too good,” Jonathon shouted down at Zevari, “It’s perfect! I can’t wait to tell the captain. This time, we’re gonna have you out of here for good! Stealing city property! And weapons, at that! I can see it now. I can see it all perfectly now. You were planning to arm that little group you’ve been brainwashing haven’t you!? Admit it!”
“No, S-Sir it’s not like th-”
“Silence!” he screamed, interrupting her, “Don’t say another word, I'm not letting you worm your dark horns over my brain, you little social polyp!”
Zevari started to work her hands loose from the knot behind her back. ‘Maybe I can run,’ she thought as she tried hard to cower in front of Eddie’s dad.
“Yeah, that’s right, I know all about your hypnotized little army. You didn’t even know it, but I had my first born son join your little ’Demon Thorns’ horde. I know the old ways, I knew it had to be my first born or you’d never let him in! Ha!”
She stopped working out of the knots for a second, forced to think a series of wait-but thoughts like ‘Eddie was there before I joined,’ and ‘First born? Eddie is an only child.’ and ‘Well almost, but it’s actually the IVORY Thorns.’ Then she tried to keep a straight face as she saw a head lower itself from the top of the window.
Jonathon was pacing back and forth. “I’m calling the captain, then we’ll see if the Alderman is still so friendly to your family and their infestation in my town.” He pulled the red glass alarm rod out of his shirt, and leaned down in Zevari’s face.
He grinned and broke the glass tube. Zevari watched with horrified eyes as the little red Alarm Wisp escaped the tube and flew out the door. She swore to herself again, thinking ‘ok, this is now very very bad.’
“Hey,” said the upside down face in the window, “Whatcha doin’?”
The guard jumped and spun around “This is City Guard business!” and he slammed the storm shutters on the window. Then turning around he added, “Probably one of your brainwashed horde minions no doubt.” He picked Zevari up by the rope tying her hands behind her back and uncomfortably hauled her into the open cell. “I had Eddie spying on you this whole time, feeding me all your little lies!” he screamed. “I’ve been trying to tell the Alderman for years now, it was a mistake to let your kind back here, and now I finally have my proof!”
Zevari suddenly went numb. ‘Your kind’ she thought and it suddenly clicked. She knew the voice from somewhere else. After months of overhearing her dad complain about council meetings and some racist locals, she’d crept onto the roof one morning and listened at the chimney. It was that voice she heard, Eddie’s dad’s stupid bigot voice. He had been screaming to her dad and the council about ‘your kind’ about some conspiracy theory he had that the Tiefling refugees were trying to bring Hell to this plane and pollute the world. But, he had it backwards, the gate was made to make the Hells more livable, everyone knew that. Zevari’s whole family had fought for generations to make it a new and welcoming land, a frontier for civilization. And now this guy was claiming they had polluted the world and we were coming to eat children and that Tieflings made ‘innocent’ people grow horns.
She couldn’t help it, she lunged at bars with her horns and cursed in Infernal.
Jonathon jumped back, then smoothed his tunic. “Just like an animal.” he said as he shook and tried to pretend it hadn’t startled him. “But the captain will be here soon, just you wait. It’s all over now.” Then, he leaned back in towards the bars and whispered, “I’m gonna get your whole Damned race thrown out of my town,” Clearly emphasizing the capital ‘D’.
A few panting breaths later, Ari had her hands out of the knots, but she kept them behind her back just in case, and tried to think of a way to get ready.
The guard captain ran into the room, with her cutlass out. Then her iron grieves skidded to a halt cutting little scratches in the floorboards. The red vapor around her hand flew into and through the floorboards. “What’s happening in here, Jonathon?” She asked as she sheathed the sword. “You used a Red Alarm, I thought you were in actual danger.” She added looking around in annoyance.
“I caught this little- uh” Jonathon hesitated and recalibrated, “rat, red handed, Sir.”
“Doing what?” the Captain asked sardonically.
“Well, Sir, you know how I’ve explained to you and Alderman Jethrose about her family and how she has been hypnotizing the local youth into an invading army.”
“I remember,” she said, sighing and rolling her eyes.
“Well, Sir, my boy, Eddvaress,”
“You mean, little Eddie the infamous sniveling little pickpocket?”
“Um, yes, Sir, but he’s only been picking the odd pocket to fit in,” He points at Zevari, “to that thing’s Gang. You see, Sir, I had him infiltrate her horde to spy on them. In fact,” he said, making a point of pride, “it was his idea even, he asked me for permission when I caught him practicing how to pick a lock.”
“Okay, that part I actually DO believe.” The captain sighed, mirroring Zevari’s own thoughts.
“And, Sir, he told me they are planning a huge invasion, they are going to storm the city when all the farmers are at work in the fields and take the Alder Council hostage!”
“And you caught little Zevari here,” she said, pinching the bridge of her nose, “She’s the invading force?”
“Pardon, Sir?”
“You said you caught her red handed, Jonathon, so was she invading?”
“Ah, uh, no, Sir.” Eddie’s dad points at the lock picks he crammed back in the lock right before the Captain arrived. “I caught her red handed stealing City Property! And, not just any property, but weapons and armaments to, uh, arm her forces to invade us and our lands, Captain.”
“Shit.” Captain Vorrass’s face fell as she looked at Zevari.
🎲🔔. . . A Relaxing Morning
“Hey,” said Raelle’s upside down face in the window, “Whatcha doin’?”
The guard jumped and spun around “This is City Guard business!” he shouted and then slammed the wooden shutters on the window.
Raelle pulled her face back just in time to avoid a bloody nose as the window frame shook. ‘I do not like that man’ She thought.
She walked across to the other side of the roof, where she left her bag that morning. She sat down by the window on that side of the building that was still open, and listened. She heard the skid of iron boots and then a conversation about a conspiracy to take over the city. A racist conversation i am NOT re-writing here because i felt bad enough about it the first time.
She pictures the young Tiefling girl she saw on the floor. Black boots, with tar over them to cover patches, glued on bits of wood to look like cool armor spikes on a leather tunic, and a face that was trying to be ‘hard’ while holding back tears. Raelle thinks back of her own time in villages and the time she tried to wear lacey black fingerless gloves to look mysterious and cool. ‘Invasion force?’ she thinks, scrunching up her face, ‘looks more like she’s trying to fit in, than invade.’
Raelle leaned over this new edge, taking care this time to stay hidden.
She saw the new tall woman there, who must be the captain.
The captain shook her head, “We actually will have to get the council for that.”
The fat guard was almost bouncing with glee.
“Go call the High Alderman and get the Crier to bring the others. But tell him to do it QUIETLY Jonathon,” She said with an angry look. “There’s no need to make a scene of this yet.” She ran her hand over her buzz-cut hair, “then, meet me at the City House.”
“Sir? What about-”
“I will see to getting Alder Igvis myself, Corporal,” She snapped at him.
Rae watched as the two guards left out the door. She slowly stood up and saw them go in two separate directions, and go into two separate houses. The fat guard went to a large fancy building with stone shingles all down the side like a fancy dress, and the Captain went to a small cottage near the edge of the city wall.
After several minutes, she saw the Guard, ‘Jonathon,’ she thought, come out with a little goblin who ran around to some other houses. And then, the Captain emerged with a tall Tiefling man. His horns were down over and around his shoulders like long flowing hair, ‘looks like a peacemaker,’ Raelle thought. The captain and the Tiefling man both ran to the fancy building as the Tiefling man tugged on a red and brown cloak, and a woman with horns stood in the doorway to the little cottage house.
🎲🌿. . . An Expected Journey
Cypress walked with the good wife into the little villa, though ‘Villa’ was maybe a bit generous. The 3 framer houses stood corner to corner with their big fields spread out to make up most of a large circle. Each of the houses was old but maintained, and looked big enough for a good size family, plus a couple of farm hands. The fourth building to this little square was a large shack, it seemed to be a barn on stilts until you saw the wall panels laying in a heap across the road. In fact, this was the public house, it had a sign on the hay loft door that said so. Like most public houses, it WAS used as a communal gathering hall in the evenings but, only when it wasn’t being used as a curing shed for the Ghadjers’. A few other small buildings dotted this fourth quarter of the circle, some workhouses, a cartery, and a cooperage.
The good wife led Cypress to the farmhouse on the right, the one that had all the rows of mounded dirt and poles with strings attached to them. ‘Vines’ Cypress thought and was proud of himself. Cypress already had an encyclopedic knowledge of over 300 types of herbs, flowers, roots, trees, plants, bulbs, mushrooms, and grasses in the wild; but the workings of how people intentionally grew them in neat little rows was still an oddity he was trying to learn more about.
They walked into the house and there, at the kitchen table, was a man with a dazed look on his face. He looked like someone on the verge of being drunk, someone who had just barely started drinking and was quickly finding his way through ’tipsy’. Cypress looked, but there were no cups or mugs on the table.
The good wife was very nervous in walking up to him, and for a moment the cleric clenched their fist, then they relaxed. It wasn’t fear the woman approached him with, but shame.
“This is Cypress,” she told her husband, “the Cleric. I, um, explained a little bit to him. But perhaps you’d better...” She trailed off as Cypress took a seat at the table.
Cypress rolled a high insight check and saw the man lovingly and tenderly touch his wife’s belly. ‘Okay, so he knows,’ they thought to themself, ‘but he’s not phased or troubled like she is.’ They looked more closely at the wife and confirmed a suspicion, ‘and she’s not scared of him, just ashamed of herself… Ah. so it’s like that.’
“So, you can help us?” The man asked, looking up from the woman’s belly to Cypress, “You can fix me in time?”
‘In time?’ Cypress thought, while out loud they said, “It’s very possible I can. Of course I will have to examine you-” The man started to rise, but Cypress waved him to stay seated, “But first, why don’t you explain a bit more to me. Your wife told me the good news about the child,” he watched carefully for any reaction, “and she explained about the accident… and what you lost.” After a moment he let out a tiny sigh, “So I, as a healer, must admit that I am a bit perplexed as to how-” Cypress sees the good wife’s face turning a dark red and stops. He screws his face up in a please-teach-me-sir expression and focuses his eyes on the husband.
“You didn’t tell him what I figured out?” the man asked, turning to his shuddering wife (Cypress used all his will not to raise an eyebrow), “Sir, you aren’t from around this area are you?”
Cypress shook his head and waited.
“See, Sir, we grow a special crop here. I grow Pre-Annual grapes and we use them to make Pre-Annual Wine. There are not many places you can grow Pre-Annuals crops. See, you have to have ground that's come up from an especially magic rich fixture, and a rift in the chronological makeup of the soil. That's why the farms here are divided in a circle like this, we each take a quarter for our crops, cause the time bubble that formed the land was a sphere, see?”
Cypress nodded for him to continue and made a mental note to learn more about this new type of plant.
“Well Pre-Annual crops have to be planted in reverse, see. We harvested the crop earlier in the spring, after the frosts were done and the berries came back to life, but before they went back into the vines. So now we're tending the crops and helping them shrink back into the ground, so that they can die and we can plant them again in the fall. Then in the winter we can watch the decaying dead vines of next year slowly grow from the snow and reconnect to the soil.” The farmer explains, “It’s easy enough work, except for a few days around planting and harvesting where you have to work out the numbers backwards to get the times exactly right. Or else every one that drank the crop might have had gotten a chronological stomach bug in a few years from now when the wine goes out to be drunk.”
Cypress took all this in, and glanced around the kitchen, and for the first time noticed the complicated calendars and abacuses.
“Well so the Pre-Annual wine and tea and such like is used by divinators. Because you get the hangover in the morning before you drink it, and then you can remember when you will have had drunken it later on, so you have memories of the future which hasn’t happened yet. And, with the wine, the fermentation process expands the effect so that you can remember further into the future, the longer the wine was aged, due to the contained and pressurized time loop see?”
“This is all very fascinating, Sir, but how does this…?”
“Well, so this morning I woke up with a right banger of a headache and I remembered getting drunk later tonight to celebrate the new baby! So, I told her this morning, you go get that Cleric who’s been camped up on the hill, he’s gonna fix it, cause I saw your new baby. And she turns white says, ‘how’d you know about the baby?’ She was a bit panicked, ya see ‘cause of the future sight and being off putting like that, and I explained.” He stands up now red-faced and excited. “See, I think that because the accident that took off my baby-berries, must have happened inside another time bubble. So I'm sure that I WILL get her pregnant tonight, after you heal me, so that she CAN HAVE HAD BEEN pregnant these last few weeks, you see.” His words start to slur a bit at the end as the future drunkenness sets in. “Sir, I can feel it starting, you’ve gotta fix me fast, ‘r else I don’t know what the baby will do in the time loop-” He hiccups.
Cypress, who had examined the good wife on the way over and was certain this baby was normal, and in no way time reversed, swallowed and nodded. “It must be so.” was all he could say and then shook the man’s hand.
Just as i never gave these patient’s names here in this story, to respect HIPAA and patient privacy, I will not give any details here of the examination or healing procedure of this man’s phallic family factory. I do not want some fantasy lawyer who specializes in HIPAA coming at me late at night from out of my DM manuals with a subpoena. I will just say that the spell was a success and the patient was left with a fully intact and working pair of klackers. A set of swinging stones that were so good, in fact, that they were blessed by a god. We resume the story a little while later. Cypress is standing outside on the porch with the good wife as her husband begins his celebratory drink that he believes is necessary.
“Ma’am,” Cypress began as he shut the door behind him, “I have not drunk any Pre-Anual wine, but you see, I do have this creeping feeling about the future.”
The woman swallowed.
“I have this suspicion that when that baby comes, perhaps a few weeks earlier than your husband at first thought it would, that it will look a lot like another man in town, a next door farmer perhaps. And I foresee that it won’t look too much like your husband in there, but he won’t mind because that’s all just an effect of its strange cross-time-wise inception, right?” Cypress stared at the mother unblinking.
“Sir, it was a mistake and I would never-”
Cypress held up a hand with a ‘don’t tell me anything I purposely am avoiding knowing about’ expression on his face. Then he smiled a reassuring smile, and patted her arm, “Regardless of how the child came to be, I expect it will have a loving father who cares for it very much.”
The woman visibly sagged with relief and Cypress’s face turned stern.
“But, Godparents are still a good idea in tortuous circumstances like these, and just maybe it would be a good idea if the child's Godfather just happened to look a lot like the child, hmm?”
The good wife nodded and Cypress smiled. “Good, now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go find a forest to sit in alone for a while.”
After Note:
Years later Cypress received a card while staying in a Temple of Sheela on the same grassy plains. It had an etching of a large happy family on the front. He could clearly see the smiling face of the farmer and the good wife were much the same, just showing the usual signs of human age. There was another man off to the side, looking like a sheepish uncle and waving. There were seven children, the oldest of which looked very much like the Uncle-man in the background, while the other six looked exactly like the farmer and his wife. On the back it read:
“Good Master Cypress,
We were so happy to finally hear word of you as we have wanted to thank you for so many years now. Surely you remember me as the farmer with the tallywobblers that got caught in a time loop. Well, we have had seven children now, and all but the first have come the normal way round in time. While our first daughter does look a little bit different due to her early swim in the time stream, everyone in the Villa knows she’s a miracle and a blessing from Sheela.
After her birth, and the birth of each child after, we have planted a reverse holly bush in your honor. We thought for some time and decided to use the leaves to make an especially high potency resistance potion under the name ‘Cypla’. Thank you so much, and please know that we have been donating a box a year to the local temple for all their field clerics.
Much love, and forever in your debt
🎲✨. . . It’s Time We Had ‘The Talk’
When Sorin got back to the orphanage, he opened the door at the same time Matteo was pushing it open. He blinked and made a conscious effort to stop talking to himself.
“Hey,” his older brother said, waving to him and coming out of the house, “You were gone this morning when I woke up.” He closed the door behind him, then nudged Sorin playfully, “were you meeting with a big muscly hunk?”
‘Well actually...’ Sorin thought for a minute picturing Hier Fooglestein. Then he shook his head and said, “No, actually I had to go somewhere and think.”
“So,”Matteo grinned back at him, “you’re getting excited for your Clericship with me?” He grabbed Sorin’s hands, almost jumping up and down, “Me too! I’m so excited. You realize this means that we’re gonna be able to grow up spending all day together. It’s the coolest!”
Sorin was laughing and smiling with his big brother and then stopped himself, and said, “Well um, yeah.” He scratched the back of his head and felt a raindrop on his hand, “That is sorta what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“What’s wrong?” Matteo asked. Then, with the blind optimism of the overjoyed, he asked, “Oh I know you, you’re still nervous huh?” He patted Sorin on the back, mistaking his grimace for a smile, “Don’t worry, little brother, I’ve learned all the best spots to get paper and ink, and where the good candles come from and-”
“-Matteo, wait!” Sorin pushes himself away, and rubs the back of his neck again. Another raindrop falls on his forehead as he looks up at the clouds in the darkening sky. “Look I-Idon’tknowhowtosaythis,soI’lljustshowyou.” He said all in one quick breath, and held out the well worn scroll.
The older boy hesitated, then took it and read it as a couple drops fell from the sky and dampened the page.
“What? You-you’re not thinking of actually joining those jerks in the ‘tower school’ are you?”
“I, um, I am actually, yeah.”
“But- but us… but the church, and the books and-”
Silence.
“...and US.”
“Matteo, this is…”
A deep breath and a courageous stance.
“This is what I want.”
The sound of raindrops on grass and hard packed dirt.
“It’s what I’ve always wanted. To understand things. To KNOW things. To see the world how it really is and learn all its secrets… to…”
A faltering voice, then excited, frightened, hopeful tears.
“...Matteo?”
“So..”
A second faltering voice.
A fist clenched on a worn scroll.
Downcast eyes avoiding the rain.
“So it was a lie then.”
“What?”
Confusion.
A scream.
“A LIE, SORIN, A LIE!”
Pacing feet stomping like a marching army.
A staccato drumbeat of hammering words.
“How. Much. How. Much. Our. Brother-hood. Our. Fam-ily. Our. PLANS!”
Feet stopped in the mud.
“You know… I really thought you were my little brother.”
Eyes meeting.
Pain.
The look of a sharp stinging pain. Of knowing the truth, but choosing a lie because it hurts less.
Tears.
“Matteo, you know I-”
“Enough.”
A refusal to hear the truth.
A refusal to feel love, because hate is easier. Cleaner.
A cold heart gripping a comforting, painful lie.
“I know what I need to know.”
A scroll dropped in the mud.
“For some of us… knowing what’s with us… is enough.”
Splashing foot steps.
“Wait!”
Rain.
“Matteo!”
Rain and tears mixing.
Knees in splashing in the mud.
A clean hand pulling a dirty scroll from a puddle.
Rain.
Silence.
Heartbreak.
Tears.
🎲🗡️🔔 It Takes Two Crimes to Make a Friendship
Wow ok, that was rough, huh? Okay, so something a bit lighter. Ari, you’re on the floor of a jail cell crying… because your family… is getting called… to a trial… about being exiled… Yikes, ok, here a cute puppy giving a high five just so we can all get through this.
Zevari was sitting in the little jail cell looking at the iron bars. Her shoulders slumped as she felt the extreme weight of giving up push down on her. Her hands were untied in her lap as she sat with her back to the wall. She looked up at the ceiling, and clamped her eyes shut against the tears. Then she thought, ‘why bother?’, and let the hot disappointment drip down her cheeks.
Raelle’s feet landed on the floor with a puff of dirt when she jumped down from the roof. She walked into the guard house and looked at the cell. The Tiefling girl was there looking up and the ceiling and crying with her arms rested on her knees.
“Hey,” Raelle said to the girl.”Whatcha doing?”
Zevari brought her head down to stare at the elf girl. “Sitting.” She said petulantly. “Are you here for the show?” she added with sarcastic scorn.
Raelle stared back with concern and pity.
Zevari wiped her eyes, and felt bad for the comment.
“So, you’re the girl who was on the roof, huh?”
“Yup.”
“So what were you going on the roof, roof girl?”
“Roof things.”
“That’s specific.” Despite herself, Zevari grinned. It was that special kind of hopeful, hopeless grin that truly depressed people have when they find something just a little bit funny and cling to it like a lifeboat.
Raelle shrugs, “I was sleeping up there last night,” She said for an explanation, “I just got into town last night and don’t really have the money for a room.”
Zevari nodded.
“So,” Realle said, nodding at the bar-shaped elephant in the room, “what happened?”
Zevari sighed, and swung her head back to look at the ceiling again. “I was here to steal something.” She paused and let out another angsty sigh. “I’ve been trying to impress this gang that I joined.” She sniffled to try and hold back another wave of tears. “I messed up though.” The tears fell and she bowed her head. “I really, really messed up this time.”
“Yeah,” the Elf Roofgirl said, “I kinda heard about it when I was doing roof things. Sounded like that guard really has it in for you. Doesn’t seem very fair.” Looking down at the Tiefling she asks, “So, you're gonna give up?”
“What, me?” the Tiefling girl looked up at her and grinned, her fangs were showing and the tears were steaming off her face, “Never.” She stood up and walked to the bars, “I was just taking a moment to get a plan together, that’s all.” She pointed at a nail on the wall by the weapons cabinet, “But, you hand me those keys, and I'm one step further in my master plan.”
Raelle stood there for a moment and looked at this girl. Brave, strong, defiant, stubborn, in trouble against a system that doesn’t understand. Maybe it was just the 26 days before this with no humanoid contact, but she began to really see herself in this girl. She grabbed the keys.
Roofgirl made to hand the keys over and then hesitated,
For a minute Zevari thought she was gonna walk away, but then she stuck them in the lock herself and opened the door. “You know,” she said to the Elf girl, “that means you're condemned with me now, right?”
Raelle smiled at the other girl's confidence, “So what happens now? When I was on the roof I saw that guard lady bring a Tiefling man into the big fancy building.”
The Tiefling girl’s yellow eyes went wide, and then turned to narrow slits, “Well then I guess I do have to ‘invade’.” She said, making finger quotes in the air.
She knelt down by the lock where Jonnathon had crammed her lockpicks in the weapon cabinet’s iron lock and jiggled them. For the first time in her life, the lock opened (this was because Jonathon crammed them in, so hard that he in fact broke the springs in the locking mechanism). She flung the cabinet doors open and immediately grabbed the Guard Captain’s parade rapier. “Poetic justice,” she whispered under her breath. Then she tried to avert her eyes and not gulp when she saw the Roofgirl grab the monk staff she’s been after. ‘Well’ she thought, ‘I guess that does make sense with the monk outfit and all.’ Then turning to her new friend, “Let’s get em’!”
Zevari ran out the door, as Raelle cursed and chased after her.
Moments later, the two girls poked their heads out an alleyway. Zevari saw the pennant on the front of the building, marking that the High Alderman was present in the building, along with all six other smaller pennants, and one she knew perfectly. It had a white gable line over two down turned gray horns on a dark blue field, her father’s pennant. Then she saw Eddie's dad grinning as he talked to a few angry looking townspeople. She saw three other faces she knew were in the town guard and one of them was also a City Militia leader. She let out a series of repetitive concussive expletives starting with ‘F’.
Raelle tapped her on the shoulder. “Look, I’ve been in your shoes before,” She hesitated, “sorta. But the point is, we can’t fight this now, we need to run.”
The next minute is a fast whisper-hissed argument with phrases like ‘too late’ and ‘come back later’. Then, because narrative causality and plot formation are very strong forces indeed, Zevari and Raelle ran. They grabbed Raelle’s tiny bag off the roof of the guardhouse, and Zevari’s ‘go bag’ from the club house (Skabber was asleep in the shade), and they fled from the town gate.
They spent several nights camping and moving north west. Eventually Ari felt safe enough and they started going into the little towns. Ari convinced Rae to put on little shows of her Monk abilities, and when she wandered through the crowd, she always managed to have a few more coins after the show. So, now they could afford room and board. But Ari never wanted to stay in the same town for more than one night, and Rae never thought much about it.
Their friendship bloomed, as they wandered from town to town. And when Zevari slept at night and Rae would meditate, Rae would smile. During the day she would let Ari lead and take command and Rae would act like the little sister. But at night, she watched over Ari and knew the truth. Rae was protecting her, keeping her safe and helping her grow.
Can we get back to the sewers now? *sniffle* Please!?
As we walk down the hallway to the office, Ari’s pace quickens, she’s stepping faster and faster when Sorin finishes his story.
“So, yeah, we haven’t really seen each other sense then. He moved out of the orphanage early to take some lodging with the Church of Shadows. But even when he was getting his things, we barely spoke. I just didn’t know what to say. Then I moved into the student dormitories, and now it's been three years. I’ve been busy with my studies and I guess he’s been busy with the church.” His voice fades, asking,“So, what do you think I should do?”
Ari reaches the archway to the office and starts to turn when Sorin reaches out a hand. “Wait!”
Everyone stops and looks at him.
“What about your advice?”
“Yeah, yeah, advice later. First we get paid!” Ari says, drywashing her hands for like the ninth time today.
When we arrive at Pulgrok’s office, the door is open and we all walk in. Rae thinks she can see the gargoyle on the wall wink, but when she turns and looks hard at it, it is still.
*Happy Croak* “Thug Muggers!” Pulgrok looks up from some open books, throwing his arms open wide. “You’ve done it, the Gelatinous Cube Babies are in their home and everything is running well.” He steps out from behind his desk, and pulls four small cloth envelopes out of his pocket. “You have now, *Happy Croak* paid off your debt to the Nibiru Sewer Company in full. Any money you earn now, is all your own.” He hands the envelopes of pay out to the Thug Muggers.
Pulgork walks back over to his desk and pulls out the Thug Mugger’s contract.
*Croak* “Now, though you must *Croak* decide.” He holds up the contract, “To stay working for the Nibiru Sewer Company, *croak* or to leave the employment and go on your *Croak* own way?”
In table talk terms, basically, this decision affects two things. First, it decides pay, and second, side quests. If you stay with the NSC you will continue to get a daily pay and pay for monsters killed, BUT it means you will have side quests you are required to do, and more rules about destroying and looting. We are about to make a big shift in the game and the world, when you go to the CoS tonight it will set off a series of events. What you decide is up to you.
And so we’ll leave off there. With Pulgrok standing in front of us holding the NSC contract.
Click the “Stay Employed” button, and he files the contract; click the “Go My Own Way” Button and he tears it up.
What will it be?
“"It doesn't need a [scientific] point, it's just like a great thing that happens... I think [love] is because the world is hard, and, I think that we are drawn to the idea of having someone else that's gonna go through it with us."”
-Justin McElroy —Dr. Sydnee & Justin McElroy, “Sawbones: Ep101 ‘Sawbones: Love’”
Table talk:
Level 4 Bay-beh! That’s right, with all the XP from finishing the Gelatinous Cube Mission, and the XP from daily adventuring, and the XP i am doling out for all the backstory work everyone has done (all the players writing backstories, and playing out childhood, adolescent, and adult scenes) everyone has reached level 4! We will have a separate session just to do some table talk and leveling. I want to do this all together this time, because everyone has been forgetting their abilities and not using their feats/traits (that’s part of why you keep almost dying guys, well that and not wanting to use spell slots). So this time we are all going to go over all our spells and abilities and feats and traits together so all the players can help remind each other as we play. I probably will not post a level-up and table talk summary, because i have a lot of DM work to do. We are gonna be moving to a new part of this adventure soon. So that means i have maps to build, NPC’s to flush out, and lots of CR/XPR maths to work out for the upcoming monsters and fights, so get excited!
We have now been playing for almost a year! That's so cool, and it’s an awesome milestone. We’ve had 33 Gaming sessions, with around 150 hours of game time going over more than 52 square feet of printed maps and over 200 pages of summaries. We took out 11 Thugs (1 Were Rat and 1 Magic Caster), 8 Rats/Giant Rats/Rat Swarms, 24 Stirge, 2 Giant Frogs, 1 Giant Bat, 4 Shadows, 8 Skeletons, 5 Zombies and 3 Crawling Claws, 3 Giant Centipedes, 2 Centipede Swarms, 2 Rust Monsters, 13 Spiders/Giant Spider/Spider Swarms, 2 Giant Spiders, and 2 Gelatinous Cubes, and 1 Baby Gelatinous Cube. The Thug muggers made ~ 250 Gold and paid off their ~190 Gold debt. We met and created over 20 NPCs. We leveled up 3 times. Ari took out 3 kneecaps. We discovered around 20 new creatures and lots of new items. Not to mention all the Character Backstories, NPC Backstories, and World Lore we’ve learned. I’m so excited for what comes next!
