Summary 7/31/22
Table Talk:
We have a hard out today, so we gotta keep an eye on the clock, but i have a plot point i want us to hit before we end the session, so i’ll be pacing us a bit more than usual. I also brought my collection of fidget toys to help us stay on task.
As discussed last time, i tried pre-writing some scenes and scenery, so we’ll try that out and see how it goes.
I handed out a few spell cards to Diedrik for cleric Feats that Cypress got when he leveled up, and one to Brooke for Zevari’s Thaumaturgy.
Also:
NuTs To YoU!
As a treat for reaching level 2 everyone was given an acorn. When we started a group chat long ago to figure out scheduling, Diedrik named it “lvl 1 Squirrels” because of the joke that ‘DMing for this group can be like wrangling squirrels’. So as a treat for my squirrels, everyone got nuts. Specifically these nuts (Acorn Screw Container by coopgnar on Thingiverse), 3d printed with a Chessex Festive® 12mm w/pips Rio/yellow d6 inside.
The main point of today won’t be adventuring, but character work. We’re gonna play out a lot of this long rest to give the characters a chance to interact with each other. For the players, one of the focuses will be on a character voice, not necessarily very different from your own voice, but a voice that you can separate in your head –and our ears – as their voice and not yours.
Mechanic talk:
After digging into some internet nerd fights, i’ve decided that the Command spell will not work on animals. The main wording is that the target must “understand your language” and i don’t think there is a compelling enough argument that animals and beasts could understand Common.
You speak a one-word command to a creature you can see within range. The target must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or follow the command on its next turn. The spell has no Effect if the target is Undead, if it doesn't understand your language, or if your command is directly harmful to it.
Some typical commands and their Effects follow. You might issue a command other than one described here. If you do so, the DM determines how the target behaves. If the target can't follow your command, the spell ends.
Approach: The target moves toward you by the shortest and most direct route, Ending its turn if it moves within 5 feet of you.
Drop: The target drops whatever it is holding and then ends its turn.
Flee: The target spends its turn moving away from you by the fastest available means.
Grovel: The target falls prone and then ends its turn.
Halt: The target doesn't move and takes no Actions. A flying creature stays aloft, provided that it is able to do so. If it must move to stay aloft, it flies the minimum distance needed to remain in the air.
" . . . Strange Things circle and grunt outside the flimsy stockades of normality; there are weird hootings and howlings in the deep crevices at the edge of Time. There are things so horrible that even the dark is afraid of them."
–Terry Pratchett, “Equal Rites”
🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿Chapter 9: A Den of Thieves:
🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿Chapter 9: A Den of Thieves:
It’s the 29th night of Mirtul and our brave sewer crusaders have just finished vanquishing four Thugs.
Our courageous champions successfully pulled off a daring ambush from behind a door! They risked it all, breaking and entering into a camp where they eat and sleep! (Leaving one poisoned, one on fire, one knocked out, and one a charred husk.)
Send up a cheer for the courageous ambushers! Yipp Hipp, Hazzah!
We open our late evening scene with a hobbit looking up and scolding a tall, gangly wizard. “When we get back up to the city, I’m signing you up for an ethics class.”
Sorin hangs his head in shame. He contemplates for a moment, deciding how best to handle his mistakes in poisoning a helpless man, who knelt screaming on the floor. With a mournful sigh he looks up at his companions, “Look I-I don’t have … a lot … but I’ll replace the bottle of poison to make up for using it so recklessly.”
There is a loud snort and we turn to look at Raelle laughing so hard she can hardly breathe. We look back at Sorin.
“It’s not about the poison, Sorin.” Ari admonishes, trying hard to fight down a laugh herself.
While Rae laughs, Cypress and Ari shame the pouting wizard. Now let’s take a moment to look around the room and re-familiarize ourselves with the surroundings.
This room is about the size of a large living room. To one side are some supplies in the corners, crates of food, some clothes, etc. Next to one of these stacks, in the middle of one wall, is a small metal stove. Its door is half open, spilling a warm glow out into the room. Attached is a chimney that goes up to the ceiling and presumably vents out somewhere at street level. There are some gravity hooks hanging on the chimney holding pots and pans. On the stove is a kettle and a small pot of food on top – the food now burning and bubbling from inattention during the fight. To the side of this stove is a half charred spellcaster, his long apron smoldering. And next to him and in the middle of the room is an upturned cask and a few smaller crates and boxes serving as a makeshift table and chairs. There are some cards and game pieces scattered across this makeshift table as if a game has just been interrupted. Surrounding the table and filling out the back half of the room are seven bed rolls, all laid out with little bits of space between them. The spaces are scattered with the usual things like packs and bags. Across from the stove on the other side of the “table” is another cask, this one with a spigot. It is propped up on a short wooden trestle made of scrap wood nailed and tied together. Back towards the entrance, is the last small stack of supplies in the corner.
After another couple rounds of shame-the-wizard, Cypress pulls a small box over to the side of the stove. Closing the front of the stove he steps up on the box and stirs the pot of bubbling food.
Diedrik: “Well you went out of your way to describe it as bubbling so I wanted to make sure it didn’t explode.”
I promise you Diedrik, that was just a bit of scene dressing, but i’ll make some exploding soup for you in the future okay?
Well, the food on the stove is not a bomb. Turns out, it’s just a pot of broccoli cheese soup! M’m M’m good! Cypress Stirs it up and takes a tentative taste. He motions behind his back to the others and to the storage boxes of food “If someone wants to dig through those and see what there is, I’ll make us some dinner.”
Ari and Rae obediently and helpfully go over the rummage through the boxes. Meanwhile, Sorin takes his new lessons about ethics to heart, and starts looting the corpses.
Ari finds some turnips and carrots, and Rae finds a small green calfskin pouch with “Mrs. Rush: Italian Medley, seasoning blend (with no salt)” stamped on it. They hand over the root vegetables and spices to the short-order cook - haha halfing jokes.
A hobbit with so much experience traveling on his own, Cypress may not have an official proficiency in cooking, but that soup sure is smelling tasty.
Rae goes over to loot the fallen poison victim. She finds two matching Aces of Hearts strapped to both his wrists. She gasps, “He was cheating!”
“What?”
“Look at this,” Rae shows the arm and the card tied to it, “he was cheating at whatever they were playing!”
Sorin perks up, “See, he was awful, it was a good thi-”
“That’s no excuse to poison him, Sorin!” Cypress flings a wooden spoon and the boy ducks.
Dejected and sullen, Sorin goes over to the smoldering spellcaster to check that nothing too valuable got set on fire. Alright, awesome, he had a scroll of Cure Wounds, along with a rope necklace and a brass ring.
Ari darts her head around to make sure no one is paying any attention to her then casually backs out into the hallway to loot the charred remains of the Thug with the crossbow. She scores an unidentifiable lump of metal, two leather work gloves – for different hands this time – and she also finds a burnt patch that is clearly some kind of insignia of rank. It shows two stars inside a circle with what looks like two half circles under it. She tucks it in her pouch with a gulp and quietly makes her way back into the main room.
Click to watch full bit.
Ari casually wanders back to the pile of supplies, and retrieves the couple sausage links and the brick of salt she found a little while ago, “ Oh hey, Cypress I found these too.”
On his box, Cypress reaches up on tip toes and gets a pan off of a hook and starts cutting the sausage into it. The sausage is old and dry, but it’s still in its casing, so it’s been stored well enough that it’s still good to eat. After all, restaurants charge three times as much for this ‘Day Aged Beef’ but we all know that’s a code. It’s just old meat. Cypress adds the rest of the turnips into the pan with a sizzling sound and reaches for the brick of salt.
“Wait, um, Cypress, before you use that salt . . . ”
Cypress turns to the anxious looking wizard, “Yeah?”
“Could I please have some of that? For spell components?”
Cypress looks at Sorin, looks at the brick of salt the size of two fists, looks at Sorin, looks at the brick. “Um, yeah?” He cuts the brick, giving roughly a cuttlebone-sized chunk to the wizard before turning back to the stove top. “I’m really glad I’m cooking,” Cypress mutters to himself. “Would he have added the whole brick to the pan?” He shaves a pile of flaky salt off the chunk and into his hand then he lifts his arm like an elegant swan neck and lets the salt flow down his arm and into the pan, proving that even hobbits can be obnoxious hipsters too – you just haven’t heard of them.
“The Thug over there also had this, can you use it?” Rae says holding out a bottle of wine to the halfling. “I’ve seen rich people cook with wine before, I think.”
Using the wine and the salt, Cypress browns the turnips and sausage into a sweet and salty sort of a sticky hash. Now, with the wine burning off in the pan the room is starting to smell pretty damn good!
Then Sorin decides to help out the group by cleaning up. Specifically by cleaning up the Thug bodies. Specifically, the body of the last Thug left un-looted. Specifically, the valuables in her clothes, pockets, and boots. Specifically the small figurines of a skeleton, and a man holding a sword in a hero pose.
Then Sorin decides to be good and actually works on cleaning up some, dragging the Thugs together into one corner by the door. Stacking and arranging them in funny poses. One’s finger in another one’s nose, one scratching his head and butt, you know the kind of thing a psychopathic toddler would do with the corpses of once-living dolls.
“Wait, weren’t there four?”
“Oh yeah. Hey Ari what happened to the one that shot you, did you end up fighting him?”
“Um, yeah, he’s uh, out in the hallway. You don’t need to worry about him though, I already put a token on him. ”
Sorin goes out in the hallway to bring in this last Thug and add him to the pile.
“Whoa Ari! What the literal fiery hell did you do!?”
It takes Sorin a bit to find this last Thug. The end of this tunnel is either under construction or is just where they like to store their big rocks. After a minute he sees the constabulary token glittering on a burnt gray lump … with arms.
Sorin walks back into the room holding the body up with an arm around him Weekend at Burnie’s style.
“I used one of the Fireballs on him, I was in a jam and there was no one else around.” Ari explains, hastily.
Sorin bursts out, “Okay, wait, so I’m not allowed to use fire anymore, because of the damage it does, but you get to do this!? Rae, Cypress, come on back me up here.”
Cypress turns his head away from the food to look over at the burned man, “Seems like a good responsible use of fire to me.”
Rae stares at the wizard with a self-satisfied grin plastered on her face, “She said no one else was around to get hurt, seems fine to me.”
Sorin stands there stuttering and staring at each of them in turn.
Ari chime in, “it’s not that you can’t use fire, it’s that you need to learn WHEN to use it. I knew none of you were close enough to get hurt, so I went for it.”
Sorin just stands there, mouth open, “I-I’m learning.. but..” He stands up straight with his old school-boy posture about to recite, “but intelligence comes at a price and fire-”
Cypress nearly falls off his box from a sudden explosion of laughter. He turns and points the dripping spoon at Sorin “If intelligence comes at a price, you need a refund, my friend.”
Sorin is silent for three full minutes as the others chuckle and go back to what they’re doing. He decides to look around for more spell components. Sorin reviews a list in his head, totally not-at-all looking over Ashley’s player notes, and looks around for any copper wire. Like a meth head searching an abandoned house, his eyes land on the shiny wire helping to hold the water cask trestle together. “Hey muscles, can you help me out?” He says waving to Raelle and then to the cask. “I need to take this stand apart for the wire. So you just need to put the water barrel on the floor.”
Rae stares at him, and then at the cask of water, then back, “That’s like 300 pounds (87 meters for you metric people), I’m not blowing my spine out my butt for you to get some shiny wire.” She stalks off to Ari muttering under her breath “… hey muscles…. muscles… I’ll show you muscles… you…”
Looking over his shoulder Cypress chimes in, “That’s a good point though, everyone should fill their canteens and water skins while we have fresh water.”
Everyone lines up at the spigot with Ari last in line, sarcastically mouthing “yes mom,” under her breath.
We all pull out our camp gear, grab a bowl of hash and bowl of soup and sit down at the table. Where, we see someone has carved lines in it. The boards run horizontally and these carvings are in straight perpendicular lines turning the table-top into a grid. There are also a couple dice on the table top and another little figurine of a zombie and a ghost.
The table: “Wait, were they playing D&D?”
Yes folks, they were in fact playing D&D; Devils and Delvers.
It feels good to sit down and eat for a bit, it’s been a long day. Everyone relaxes, taking off heavy gear, letting down their shoulders, and stretching out their legs. The soup is wonderful after so many days of granola bars and jerky. The carrots soaked up the greasy cheese oil and Mrs. Rush’s seasoning powder masks any burnt flavor. For an average person living at home, it might have been an adequate everyday meal, but for us, down here, after everything we’ve been through lately, it’s a glorious feast.
Reader, let’s all take just a second here to drop our shoulders, unclench our jaws, stretch big and sigh. Doesn’t that feel nice?
Chapter 10: a restless long rest
🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿
Chapter 10: a restless long rest 🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿
After the biggest meal we’ve had in days, we’re all feeling a lit- a litt- *yawn* huh, uh, sorry, a little — bit… tired.
Ari and Cypress set up their own bed rolls, choosing decidedly NOT to sleep in any of the Thug’s gear. Rae and Sorin talk about who will take which half of the night to meditate and half keep an eye on things. Sorin offers to take the first go, and Rae lays down for a bit dozing in and out, to let her body recover.
As we all get ready for beddy-byes Cypress says his daily blessing. He places some moss balls down and calls the few bugs in the room over to join him, they form into neat little lines of worshiping cockroaches and ants in front of the moss. He places his Holy Symbol on the pillow of moss and bows his head in prayer. He feels the hand of Chauntea on his back, feeling the spirit of life itself grow inside him. After a moment where he can feel the force of life flow throughout the universe, he disperses the little cloud of bugs to put his moss away. When Cypress goes to put away his Holy Symbol his eyes widen as he notices something.
The symbol of Chauntea he carries is a tree of life carved onto some of the holy wood. And now, for the first time he’s ever seen, it has a crack. A small split in the wood has formed, from the top of the wood into the branches of the carved tree like a lightning bolt. Taking a closer look he realizes that the crack is burned, and deep within it seems to have a faint blue-ness to it. Cypress holds it to his chest, and lays down to dream uneasy dreams of what this could mean.
As the others fall asleep, Sorin sits at the ‘table’ with one book in his hand – held open by thumb and pinky – and another book laying open in front of him. The open book on the table is full of cramped notations and hasty scribblings, clearly some sort of journal – either from a madman or a college student. Atop it is laid out a few charcoal pencils and a fine wood pen. In his other hand, some little glitters of light dance as he experiments and practices with the very foundations of reality itself. Ya know, wizard school homework.
After some hours at this, Sorin feels his eyes drooping and gets stung in the cheek, by an errant glimmering spark. Deciding he needs to rest, he taps Rae on the shoulder so the two elves (well elf and half-elf) can switch out.
Rae nods and gets up stretching.
Sorin folds his bedroll into a cushion and closes his eyes to meditate and rest.
As he meditates in a blank and empty void, Sorin’s body relaxes. In this not-sleep void he begins to feel uneasy as if many eyes are watching him. His dream self turns in the void looking around as he begins to hear chittering and the mashing of teeth. In the dark void around him he hears slurping and crunching as claws and hooks and tentacles begin to emerge around him.
Sorin, roll a Wisdom Save.
12.
Great, and now a Con Save.
*silence*
Nat’ 1.
Later when he wakes, Sorin will have -1 max health until his next long rest, and he will have a bruise on his arm as if someone grabbed him.
As Sorin rests his eyes, Rae stands on top of a crate. She balances as she moves between forms. A lunge, a block, a hold, practicing the martial skills she learned in the temple so long ago, as she balances on the box. After a while, she finishes her practice and changes to a bit of a work out. She puts two boxes a few feet apart, grabs her bag, and then stands with one foot on each box dropping her bag from one hand before catching it with the other, and dropping it again to repeat.
After some more stances Raelle-the-Tired sits back down to let her body cool off. She leans her head back to mediate, reclining in a pose Sarah calls “like a cowboy sleeping,” and Diedrik calls, “oh you mean like a f**k boy.”
Raelle relaxes, and mediates the rest of the night with her eyes open, keeping a half watch over the camp.
As Rae relaxes on her bed roll, the world passes in front of her in a haze. A foggy mist covers the world, parts of reality coming through the mist and joining into half-dream visions. She sees the ‘table’ cask doing monk poses, but we still see the room as it really is. Everything is fuzzy, like a grainy out of focus movie. We see Bostra’s face levitating over the stove. We see a hippo enter the room on tiptoes. Bostra’s face grows into the body of a long slender alligator. The hippo and the Bostragator dance for a moment.
Rae roll of Wisdom check for me. 4. Alright cool, never mind then, enjoy the dream.
The Botrasgator and the hippo ballet across the room, forward and back, side to side. They hug and swing and suddenly they are dancing with ostriches. The large birds are wearing Thug capes that start off in a pile on the floor. The Bostragator and the hippo slowly lift them up and dance with each bird partner out of the room as Raelle hums and bobs her head to no music whatsoever.
We awake to the wonderful smell of purple brewing in the morning. Wait, yeah, no, i mean, purple. Huh, definitely, purple. What smells like purple?
Rae is the first to come to, rubbing her eyes and clearing away the alligator-hippo-ostriche-fog to see Bostra sitting at the table. He’s holding a large tankard in one hand, and chopsticks in the other.
He glances over at Rae and slurps. “Want s-me brea-fast?” he asks through a mouth full of sludge.
Rae sighs and looks at the mug full of a bright green slime. So thaaat’s what smells purple.
Everyone slowly wakes up and groggily putters over to the table. Sorin goes to grab some leftover hash, while Rae and Cypress stare at Bostra's mug. Meanwhile, Ari tries to convince herself she can sleep through all this.
As he gets some hash off the stove, Sorin’s sleeve flutters up and he sees the reason his arm feels so sore. A bruise just above his elbow wraps almost all the way around his arm, and at that moment he remembers his dream. “Uh, hey Cypress, can I talk to you for a second?”
“Yeah, hang on just a second,” Cypress motions a wave behind his back. Staring at Rae he says, “I wanna see how this plays out.”
While Sorin was getting leftovers, Rae mustered up the courage to actually try some of Bostra’s mystery food. She breathes quickly in and out to psyche herself up, like someone about to do the ice-bucket challenge. She pulls out some of the goo with the chopsticks, closes her eyes, and plops some in her open mouth. Her eyes go wide.
After some chewing she swallows with a look of amazement, “That tastes…. exactly like a big turkey dinner. With gravy and stuffing and…. but how? What? I-”
A very unruffled Bostra looks at her, “Well yeah.” then looks back at Cypress with a can-you-believe-this-fool look on his face.
“OOOH, there’s like MRE’s, ok, gotchya,” Cypress says, turning around on his stool-crate. “Yes, Sorin, what did you need?”
“Well I, and I know you have knowledge about medical stuff, but I-”
It is at that moment we are interrupted, as a large bullywog enters the room. He is a wide and short toad man. His chin and jowls ripple as he talks in a throaty croak-accented voice. “Pulgrok *croak* I am Pulgrok, upper foreman of the southeast sewers.” As he talks his tongue darts out with little flicks here and there.
He is wearing a simple red double-breasted tunic with the top few buttons open. It’s covered by a simple leather vest that was either a catastrophic accident inside a pocket factory, or a scientific sewing experiment to see if you can actually stitch only pockets together and call it a vest. There are small brass rods, tools, quills and some small sticks poking out from under lots of little flaps, all with mismatched buttons fighting and straining to keep closed.
“Bostra has informed me that *croak* you lot have taken out no less than eight of these Thugs,” he turns his head and glob of spit flies out like a dart landing in the hair of the unconscious Thug in the corner. “I am inclined to believe him since my men have helped collect several of these incapacitated brigands.” Pulgrok reaches inside his vest and pulls out a damp clipboard. “So we would like to hire you. For 2 gold a day to continue incapacitating these Thugs for us.”
He reaches into pocket after pocket searching for something, before finally pulling the string around his neck, and putting some spectacles on his face, “Plus a reward of 7 gold of each Thug you take care of. *croak* Also, we would reward you for any petulant creatures you can snuff out for us. Rats, Bats, Stirge and the like. *croak* If you accept, you will also get a reward for all the creatures you’ve already ‘pest controlled’.” He pauses, taking a pen out of a pocket and licking the nib.
A few heads turn and look at Bostra, “Don’t look at me,” He says, scraping some muck off his boot, “You’ve taken out the nine Thugs you needed to for our contract. So you don’t have any obligations here.”
Ari thinks about this for a second, “Pulgrok said eight and I count…”
Everyone, roll a perception check.
Everyone but Cypress glances over at that Thug on the ground in the corner. All the Thugs from yesterday were carried out sometime during the night, and this one doesn’t really look all that familiar. Red hair, curly red beard, kinda heavy, large black boot print on his face. They turn back to look at Bostra, who glances down and scrapes a bit of mud off his big black boot with a knife. The mud has several curly red hairs in it.
“Yup, nine, nine, right guys? Nine.” Sorin and Rae and Ari all say, nodding at each other.
Polgrok croaks. “So about the job offer…” his words hang in the air as he holds out the clipboard and pen.
After short exchange and clarification of terms everyone agrees to sign up as official employees of the Nibiru Sewer Company. Hired on officially as Pest Control, with a bonus for knocking out any Thugs and reporting them. They will get 2 Gold a day each, plus a bonus for various vermin. They will also get keys to areas as needed, and information on what to expect, as well as access to a map.
“Very *croak* good. So except for the Thugs, which were a contract for The Constabulary, my record shows your current bonus at 59 Gold, 0 Silver, and 2 Copper,” Eyes around the room sparkle with greed, “would you like that *croak* doled out now?” Ari’s fingers twitch as she rings her hands, “Or applied to your current debt with us?”
“OUR WHAT!?!?”
Pulgrok adjusts his glasses and flips papers on his clipboard, “Yeess, on the same chart, I have your current debt at 253 gold, 7 silver, and 6 copper for damages and fines.”
“Wwhu… but.. how…?”
*Croak* “let’s see, two *croak* broken gate locks, one ripe mushroom killed, one young mushroom killed AND stolen. Six unauthorized lever usages, one piece of equipment repaired due to a *croak* arrow. One door rehung and new hinges, three barrels, two crates, eight scrolls of mending, three short swords, three health potions, thirty rations, one CROAK-bar, two water barrels, six large animal corpses littered left as refuse.” He takes in a deep breath, “Thirteen small animal corpses and four walls *croak* dismantled.” During this listing, Sorin remembers the scrap of paper he’d picked up (the plot item Ashley got) and starts checking off some of these as Pulgrok goes through it.
There is a long silence here and then the table erupts in shouting.
“We didn’t know!”
“How could we!”
“Bostra, why didn’t you-”
And so on.
And folks, the actual players table was chaos too, as i laughed and laughed, pointing out the things had been described as having “property of the sewer” stamp on them, and that players had gotten hints about this all along.
I’ll skip some of the haggling here as it was a bit rushed and passionate. Basically, the group convinces Bostra to cover the cost of the dismantled walls since they were dismantled in pursuit of The Constabulary’s goals with the Thugs. Ari returns the crowbar, Sorin gets the short sword back from Rae and returns all three, Cypress gives up the eight scrolls of mending, and Rae gives back the thirty rations.
We left off with the new negotiated debt at only 175 Gold, and 6 Copper. As well as an agreement that each day's pay of 2 Gold be paid to each character and the Pest Control bonus is to go into a group pot; as it is the group as a whole that the debt applies too.
Everyone is signed and agreed. With that, we close out our first quest “Thugs for Days,” and open up our second quest “Under Debt and Underground”
Next Time!
Book 2: Employment
“Sometime there aren't RIGHT decisions, sometimes there's just decisions."
-Taako –Justin McElroy, “The Adventure Zone: Balance”
Table talk:
Not a lot of table talk this week since, we were running late and a few of us had a hard out.
The remaining thought is just to think about my having pre-written scenes/scenery, was it a good or bad element. More on that next time.
