Thug Muggers Under Nibiru 9/2/24

Table Talk:

Hurray! This is the first time we’ve all been back together in two months!

I have some Inspiration points to dole out. Ashley takes one point, (she was confused and not expecting this). This weekend (very frequently actually, but i thought about it this weekend) in our chats we kept teasing Sorin – including a picture i found of a ‘Family’ triple photo frame, and labeled it “Ari”, “Rae”, “Cypress”, and “Sorin is somewhere in a separate frame”. Playing a fun heel type character in a group can be really difficult. Accepting it, and playing into it as the butt of the jokes is often even harder. For a long time now you’ve been willing to go along with the ribbing and digs, and slights at Sorin. It’s commendable being willing to carry through that much, and we all say thank you. Every narrative group dynamic thrives off of a heel, Kelso on Scrubs, Wade on Distractible videos, Kelso on That 70’s show, a clown in the truest sense that can take a punch and still come up smiling at the audience accepting their hate and love in equal measure.

But wait, there’s more! Brooke also gets Inspiration. Specifically, 4 points of Inspiration and 2 DM Question tokens. The Inspiration is from her four sessions separated from the group. It's not easy to play 1 on 1 D&D, and it's even less fun when one of the 1’s is supposed to be 1 of 4 and can hear 3 of the 4 the 1 belongs to laughing when the other 1 in the 1v1 is sitting with them, leaving the first 1 all alone…1. But she did a great job keeping true to the situations she was in and not just fighting and saying, “Okay, I want back now, I’m done being on my own.” The two DM Questions are for specific instances in her adventure where Brooke was genuinely very upset and scared, but trusted that i wouldn’t do her dirty, kill her off, use her as an evil pawn, etc. Unlike a DM Hint where i give a player directive guidance, the DM Questions are to ask a specific question and get a meta answer, “What is tZulèe doing with the dead crow?”, “Where is Sorin’s left shoe?”, “Why is Rae so itchy?”, “How do we find the map to the Gambler’s pub?”, etc. And so for trusting me twice in two big moments, Ari gets 2 of them.

At the risk of being much too long winded in this header today, i have two other things i mentioned that go hand in hand. The first is world time. This session is midday on the 18th of Kythorn, Ari separating from the party at around midday on the 17th. ‘But, Kai, we only had like three fights, each one less than 6 rounds and then some looking around? That's like 15 minutes!’ Yes, true. If we assume that every action only takes the 6 seconds of a combat round with no action ever taken that takes any longer, AND if we assume that no action is ever left out of the game. But we walked around, and back, we talked about things, we thought about things, and we rested. No big Rests, but presumably breaks to take a drink of water and all the little things we never include on top of the table (like using the little gargoyle’s hole). I assume that a check where a person learns a fair amount about the biology, maturity, and anatomy of another species takes more than 6 seconds. That’s why, as i mentioned before, i divide the day in four and rotate through them each session. This is a rough estimate of elapsed time, which works for us until we have a mechanical need for more exactitude, and is a good averaging for our world. Some sessions (like walking across the whole city four times) probably take a lot longer, and some sessions (like a thirteen round fight with a Swarm of Rats) probably take a lot less.

Lastly – and definitely too long winded, but i’m including it anyways – my pet peeve with dice rolls (especially misses/failures) in a lot of actual play and media references. Dice, and the numbers in general, are just a tool for the narrative. If a creature has a 16 AC and you miss on a 13, that isn’t a moment of ‘what how could I miss?’ or ‘hahaha I fell over cause i missed so bad’. The dice rolls are just a way of coagulating the large misty foam of bubbling universe possibilities into a tiny human number. You might hit… but just not hard enough to do damage. The creature might dodge, or block. You might have the perfect swing of your axe, but the handle is wet with blood, and slips in your hand so you have to readjust your grip and don’t have time to swing this round. The wall of the eight hundred year old dungeon might settle and let a brick loose that startles you into faltering at the last second. Etc, etc, etc. I’m honestly not sure where i’m going with this other than just ranting at the internet so i’ll leave it off by just reminding us all to think more and be more creative with the narrative around and after our ice rolls.

Let’s get on with it.

Practically every pre-human race and every primordial nomadic human tribe honoured a goddess of harvest and fertility, a guardian of farmers and gardeners, a patroness of love and marriage.

—Andrzej Sapkowski, “The Last Wish: The Voice of Reason 2: II”

🧺🛡️🎲🗡️📿✨🌿Chapter 23: Reunification

When the rope frays and the knot lets go, Ari has just a second to take in the shape of the room as she falls. Ironically, it’s about the same amount of time she had to look at it the last time she was here – when she was getting pulled UP the waterfall on the other side. Cypress and Rae are prone but they see their friend splash into the river on the other side. They're trying to scramble to their feet as they hear her gasping and trying to swim for the mossy bank. Mossy? Yes indeed, that whole side of the room near the river is covered in dark dirt and darker moss. Rae and Cypress lose sight of Ari as the current takes her out of their direct line of sight, behind the large broken crystal in the center of the room faintly glowing in the darkness. After a few seconds where they forget to breathe, they see Ari swing out, and then back behind the crystal, holding onto something they can’t quite see.

Rolling a 10 on a DC 8 Strength Save, Ari just manages to get both her hands on the rope above the river as she gets swept along. The pulling force of the flow tugs at her and she feels her Roper-stretched muscles jarring. Looking around frantically, she can see that this rope is the lower of two stretched across the water here. They’re both tied to rough wooden posts – like barn wood beams – sticking out of the dirt and rock on either side of the rushing stream. The two ropes are two or three feet apart with a top and a bottom rope and nothing else. She whips her head, looking from side to side for something else to get her to safety. To her left is a large steeply sloped beach face covered in dark moss and dirt, and to her right is a small tunnel leading away from the ropes.

Making a quick judgment call, Ari tries to swing towards the dark green ba- one of her hands slips and she bounces in the water trying to keep her other hand on the line, and her head above water.

On the other side of the large cave, Sorin fails his first Death Save.

Cypress – now back in halfling shape – still has his brain in fish mode. He flops and flips, wiggling around until he’s close enough to slap a sloppy hand onto Sorin’s chest and cast Spare the Dying.

Rae stands up.

The room is a tall cave with a floor that is smooth but lumpy, gently sl-

-Okay nevermind you’re already running.

Rea runs across the gently sloping berm of the cave floor – with all its little ups and downs – past the broken crystal in the middle. She sees the steeper slope of the bank by the water, covered in dark brown dirt and deep moss. In front of her is a strange tree, discolored and mottled with graying limbs and bone white patches of…

She runs right past it without looking, then skids down the bank close to Ari.

Brooke: “Can I roll Dex to try and swing my other hand back to the rope so i don’t have disadvantage on the next Strength check?”

Sure, that works.

Okay, you have both hands on the rope again. Now let’s have a quick Luck contest, for something you don’t know about.

Brooke: “I’m using one of my inspirations, cause that was a 2!”

Brooke: “Well now it’s a 3.”

Well i got a 19. Rae, you’re turn for a Luck Contest.”

Sarah, startled: “What? Uh, 10.”

I’ll tell you in just a second. I got a 6. Now a Strength Check to pull Ari out.

Sarah: “21! There is no way I'm letting her slip away again this time!”

“Intruders! Interlopers, Ga’hkawh Robock chaw! Raiders! Rustlers! Thieves!”

The shouts are coming from a small angry green goblin running from the tunnel behind Ari. She tries to say something, but the spray of the water hits her in the face and she starts coughing. The little man is crossing the river, using the two ropes as a bride; his hand on the top rope, and his feet on the bottom -

Sarah and Brooke together: “Oooooh…”

-his shoe drops down heavily on Ari’s first hand, then her second until she lets go and sinks, sputtering, into the stream.

“Hey!” Rae shouts at the goblin, and then leaps to the side. She grabs Ari’s outstretched hand, heaving her friend out of the spinning torrent and onto the bank.

Sorin is still unconscious and Cypress looks back and forth between the boy on the ground, and the girls stuck between a river, and an angry goblin. Groaning, the cleric leaves his patient and hurries towards the others.

Nymbus: “Can I make a Perception Check to see if the Goblin is wearing some sort of uniform?”

Actually i’ll let you choose, either a perception check to try to get details about what he’s wearing, or a History Check to see if you can recognize or understand any meaning from their clothes.

Nymbus: “Ugh, it doesn’t matter, it’s a 6 either way.”

Cypress tries to get a glimpse of the goblin’s clothes to figure out what they might be – but just as he gets across the stone room to the bank, the Goblin turns its back and starts climbing down the post towards Rae.

Bostra is looking back and forth, clearly in distress and wanting to go over to the others, but not wanting to leave unconscious Sorin all alone.

When he looks down again, Sorin is blinking away the remains of a >10 Death Save from his eyes.

“Spit!” the older gnome commands.

Sorin turns his head, forms an embouchure, then pushes nearly a quart of water out of his mouth in one long unbroken jet.

When Sorin turns back, Bostra stares down at him and just says, “Stay here and don’t, er, well, try not to do anything stupid.”

Then Bostra is gone.

As soon as Bostra is gone, Sorin has to put his hands up in front of his face, sputtering as Akris flicks water at him, “You thirsssty? You look thirsssty!”

Ari is sitting on this strange anti-beach where instead of grass, the berm is a smooth lumpy rock, and the beach - or bank - face is a steep slope of dirt and moss. Catching her breath and looking pathetic like a drowned cat, her Performance Check gives advantage to Rae in a second here.

Rae holds up a finger to the angry shouting goblin, then reaches down and ties her bandana (her Sentimental Cloth, an artifact from the monastery which she can always sense the location of) around Ari’s bicep – in an ancient Monk technique called ‘tracking and tagging the toddler’. Then she stands back up and turns to the shrieking goblin, “Okay, now then.” She looks down at him, “I’m sorry, we didn't mean to intrude on your,” she glances around, “dirty cave hole river beach.” She hauls Ari up to her feet, putting an arm under her shoulders, “I’ll just take my friend here, and go.”

With the advantage from Ari looking so pathetic, Rae rolls a 17.

From the top of the little beach hill here, Cypress sees a remarkably swift transformation in the little screaming goblin. In the blink of an eye the goblin goes from an argo shouting mess, threatening them with his fists; to an old mother hen, pecking at them and hooting while making shoo shoo shoo shoo gestures with his green fingered hands. Cypress takes a step towards the others to help, but the goblin’s head snaps back to look and then they throw something at him shouting, “Stay back or there’ll be trouble!”

Sorin looks around. First for ropers, and then not seeing any stalagmites of stalactites, breathing a sigh of relief and just looking for a place to sit for a bit. First, he very much wants to go and inspect the dining table sized broken crystal in the middle of the room that looks like it was cut in h—his angry lungs stab at his insides, and his head is still spinning and he goes over to one side to lean against a large boulder.

Back by the river,

Rae and Ari (back together again, hurray) move up the sloping beach and off the goblins dark mossy lawn with Rae helping Ari (yup, definitely back together) by half carrying her as she coughs out a bit more water.

Cypress takes this moment to investigate the bit of ground they trampled behind the goblin for damages. Near where they were guided up, he sees the collection of bone white mushrooms. All of them are differentiating sizes, but all of them are near perfectly round. The largest ones are just a bit bigger than a foot(soccer)ball, and the smallest are like coins tossed in grass. As the others walk up the bank, guided by the goblin, Cypress can see movement in the mushrooms. Near where Ari and Rae just were, the smallest mushrooms seem to be deflating, until they seem to disappear. Then the next smallest ones seem to grow for a second and deflate themselves before disappearing, continuing like this in a smaller-to-larger wave until the largest mushrooms puff up a little more, looking full and round again. It’s as if some strange mushroom sea serpent – but on land – has been coiling its way out to them, and is just now starting to retract.

Over by his rock, Sorin starts looking around for a way out. The room is shaped like two trapezoids smushed together on the short sides, and in all four corners there are waterfalls. The one nearest Sorin is flowing up towards the ceiling, and so is the one furthest away; the one the current of the water was pulling Ari toward. All the walls around the room are rocky, unforgiving stone. But, after a more thorough check, he can see the same tunnel on the other side of the river that Ari saw before. It’s a wide crack in the cave wall positioned up over the river and banking away into the darkness.

When he finishes his full circle inspecting the room, and looks back at the wall, something there seems…

With a 14 Investigation Sorin thumps his head, ‘of course!’ It’s one of Devin’s marks. Duh.

He calls over to Akris thinking, ‘I bet the others have things they need.’

While Ari and Rae finish climbing the strange beach back to him, Cypress takes a look, first at the knife the goblin threw at him, then at the goblin’s belt of tools once they’re close enough. The knife is a small and simple knife with a curved spine, and a clipped peak point just past the handle – clearly the kind of tool made for gripping and pulling. The handle is simple wood with a brush at the other end made of fine – though somewhat stiff – boar hairs. Once up at the top, the goblin takes the knife back from Cypress’s outstretched hand, and tucks it into a small flat apron full of assorted gear tied to their upper thigh. There is a bigger knife there above what looks like a hand held blunt auger, as well as a set of long bulky shears next to a pair of scissors and a delicate snipper. Just as Cypress is starting to piece this all together, he sees the goblin’s gloves and gets confused all over again. The little green fellow has three pairs of gloves all clipped to his belt by means of a clever arrangement of grommets and rings. The first, on the right side is a set of gloves made out of loosely crocheted or knit twine, like a medium mesh. The second pair, just behind them, are heavy duty leather gloves like the padded bulky work gloves dock workers sometimes use to avoid rope burn. The last pair, on the same side as the flat tool pouch, is black and delicate made mostly out of a thin soft leather, but with heavy copper plates and rings riveted to them like battle gauntlets.

Ari stands up a little straighter and lets go of Rae, “We’re very sorry, we didn’t mean to step on your Mushrooms.”

“Ha!” the goblin barks a short derisive laugh, “You not step on mushrooms. If you had, you be dead!” he says, leaving us unsure if this is a warning about the nature of his crops, or a threat about his own protectiveness.

“So what kind of mushrooms are they?” Rae asks with polite interest. The goblin looks at her and crouches, bending at the knees and putting a hand towards his knives. “Not,” Rae hurries to add with her hands up in calming motion, “because I want them, I’m just curious.”

“The expensive kind…” He says, very slowly easing his hand back, “and the dangerous kind,” he straightens a little, “and the expensive dangerous kind,” he begins to relax, “and the dangerously expensive kind.”

Rae tries to think of something else to say, and comes up with, “Well thank you for saving us from them.”

“Pppfttee!” the goblin scoffs and blows a raspberry, “Not saving you, saving my crops, you would taste too good and spoil them, or taste too bad and make a rotten yield!”

“Um… well still, uh, thanks.”

At that point, Bostra arrives, very…. abruptly. His puts a hand on Ari’s midsection and pushes, almost tossing her back out of his way, then a hand on Rae’s knee and-

“Wha-”

-pushes her into the background as well. He is discernibly less forceful with Cypress, but he still grabs him by the shoulder and – giving Cypress a second to take a step back – physically moves the cleric behind him. With the goblin nodding, he raises both his hands over his head in an interlocking fist, then brings them down into his own rock hard gut with a grunt.

Sarah: “Huh?”

Brooke: “What?”

Give me a group History check to see if you can figure this out.

Traditional goblin culture is very different from most of the ways we’re used to. And in some ways you can see why the old stereotypes of barbarically uncivilized half-men-half-creature-beastlings were so widespread for so long. Their mannerisms and customs do often come across as… aggressive, to us. But, Bostra is, in fact, just being polite. He is showing himself not to be armed with exploding gas, or any of the odd internal bombs – an old custom from the long past history of the Lavatic Wars. This isn’t so out of place when you remember that our modern salute just stems from knights lifting their face plates to show they aren’t spies, or handshakes being adapted from grabbing wrists to inspect for daggers, or the (now mostly forgotten) custom of removing rings before dinner to avoid poisonings, or any of the other little ‘civilized’ mannerisms that really just stem from ‘barbaric times’. He’s not ‘being rude / mean to us’, he is clearly displaying a hierarchy, then honoring the newcomer by showing that they are talking to a leader. Goblins might be thought of as strange when they throw someone against the wall for doing something wrong; but goblin bodies are very different and this hardly affects them, it’s not their fault you’re so fragile and pass out from hitting your head – you should learn to have a better head in their company. And after all, to them the idea of shouting and saying hurtful things, makes the other races immoral and uneducated cowards. Because to them words are what define personhood they are beyond holy, and precious above everything else – so using words to hurt someone, is like using holy scripture as a baseball bat.

Sorin comes running up from behind behind us going, “Oooo guys, I found one of Devin’s m-” when Bostr turns to stare at him with a glare like a back handed slap.

The young wizard slumps his shoulders and walks away to check out the weird crystal.

While Bosra and the goblin talk in a crackly hoarse language that sounds like gravel going through a blender, Cypress looks around to get an eye over this strange mushroom farm.

On the far right there's a plot nestled up against the wall. It is a small area of thorny brambles and chunks of small broken bits of bones with a few odd strands of day-green grass growing. And in the middle, poking their heads around and through it all are fist sized void-black mushrooms… does it almost look like some of them have spiky horns to you?

The next plot over is a few good clumps of ashen gray mushrooms with wide flat caps and almost no lip to their ring skirt, but with skinny, warty stipes holding them up. They look like the capital letter T spun around in a circle and are growing around the remains of another odd broken underground tree. Nearer us, close to the edge of the mossy dirt that would be the wrack line on a normal beach, there is one other eye-catching feature. A ring of seven smaller gray mushrooms, in a perfect circle.

On the other side of the dying tree is the plot of white mushrooms, and on the other side of those, is a moldering branch – or maybe a long thick root – siphoning water from the river. Then there is the plot of teal shaded mushrooms. Other than their color and the few yellowish warts, they seem completely normal. But the whole plot is underneath a thick canopy of all-encompassing pearlescent spiderwebs.

The last section, near the far wall, is full of dark green and bright green fluted mushrooms with inside out caps. They are growing on a patch of mossless dirt with large bones like the rib cages of elk, elephant tibia, and giant bat wings scattered all around.

Mixed into all the plots, there are little planks, pieces of simple and well worn wood which are gray-white with grainy salt flecks on them, making them look like rectangular ghosts nailed to the ground. These are clearly used as stepping stones to allow someone very stretchy and nimble to move throughout the crops without ever touching any mushrooms, plants, or ground. Except in the last section, where the boards are scattered somewhat uniformly apart, and there is a standing pole in the middle with a rope that a skilled climber, jumper, and swinger (not like that Sorin), could use to navigate between them.

Pouting a little now, Sorin decides to take a look at the big crystal.

The whole thing is a cluster of seven or eight roughly hexagon stalks growing up at odd angles. But, where they would have towered over us before, something has cleanly cut through them and left a smooth flat plane big enough to be a bed. They are a fairly uniformed cloudy gray color, like granite, but they are opaque-nearing-transparent like quartz if it was hex coded to 75747C, 75747CB0 with the alpha transparency. The dull glow we have in the room seems to be emanating from throughout them rather from one particular point.

Sorin goes up to inspect it.

Okay, how do you want to do this? What kind of roll?

Ashley: “Arcana since it’s glowing. That’s a 12.”

Cool, now give me a Con Save with disadvantage.

Ashley: “…6?”

Sorin pushes a tiny bit of his own magic into the weird magic rock… and he goes limp, falling unconscious to the floor (i’ll let him explain when someone kicks him awake again).

Finishing their dialogue with sounds like maracas full of lead weights, Bostra and the goblin turn to the rest of the party – the conscious party that’s over here, that is, not Sorin lying unconscious like thirty feet away. The goblin chews the air and says, “Can't be too careful. That's why build bridge, build traps, build tree and alarms. Once saw a whole Grick go through the water while still fighting a Giant Cenipeda. Came down one end, and up t’other.” He nods approvingly, “Now then, introduce yourselves.” He points at Ari’s head, “First, horny one.”

Trying not to blink or laugh, Ari says, “Zevari.”

“Hmm…” the goblin’s mouth works as he tastes it, “Good name. Have the Z letter and have V letter too. Holy letters for Kohk, good sign.” He lifts his pointy chin with its stiff curl hairs at Rae, “Staff lady next.”

“Raelle Woodmaker.” She says with a polite bow of her head, to mask the smirk as Ari being compared to a [ROOSTER].

The goblin looks pitiful, “Tutt, unlucky, very sorry. E letter and A letter so close, parents must have pissed off Kohk bad.” Then with a smile, “Still, two stick letters for stick lady. Good fit.” Turning to Cypress, “You are the correct height,” he says approvingly, “What is your name?”

Cypress smiles and introduces themself, “Cypress.”

The goblin works his jaw, getting the feel for the name, “Y is lucky letter, like yes for Kohk, double S letter, eehh…” his open palm teeters back and forth in the air like an indecisive scale.

Akris interrupts with a hissed, “Isss am Akrissss-”

The goblin looks up at him sharply, “Feather wings inside cave, borderline useless. Next.”

With a hand on its small wooden shoulder, Cypress introduces his familiar, this is tZulèe.”

“Aaah,” the goblin’s eyes light up and he lifts both his hands up, bending at the elbows to touch his shoulders as if lifting invisible weights before bowing a little, “Little T letter then apostrof mark, then big Z letter yes?” No one corrects him and he continues, “Thank you for visiting, young majesty.”

The goblin looks over his audience and touches his collar, “This one is Gurf’n. G and U letters, then R and F with apostro N. No no great name, not holy name, but good name. Name with earth and dirt and round bones,” he nods.

“Ah,” Ari says, trying to join in, “Then it is a good fit that you became a farmer.”

Her smile starts to fade away in the awkward silence as Gurf’n looks up at her with the confusion of a parent who just heard a child say that boiling water is hot to touch. “Duh. Yes.” He waves a hand, “this is like saying that finger bones fit good in hand, good thing they not too short or too long. Of course they do, they are two and one but not three.” (an idiom meaning, the are two parts of a whole, but they are something other than the individual parts). Then he gives Bostra a friendly nod, “See you soon, careful on bridge, and do not touch tunnel by house.” And he walks away the way he came.

As we walk back towards the crystal and Sorin’s unconscious body, let’s talk about goblins. I mentioned that words are important to them, well, they view words as sacred because language (the ability to think, store knowledge and pass it on to others) is a thing that makes us different from animals and beasts. This is why they rarely use some words, and more conservative goblins use as few words as possible, treating them like a precious resource. For instance, “I/me” is rarely used because in most contexts, it seems obvious, “I like this flower,” becomes, “like flower,”; not out of stupidity or a poor vocabulary, but because ‘I’ is redundant – ‘I’ is the one speaking, if it was someone else then it would be ‘jeff’ – and ‘this’ becomes redundant – if i am holding this flower then that is the obvious flow i’m referring to or else i would say ‘those flowers over there’.

Names therefore also become very important, because a name makes a thing what it is. The spelling of names is not a universal hobby (with some exceptions that will come up later, i promise you. But for Gurf’n as a follower of Kohk (the Worm God of things that burrow, crawl, and dig through the earth to make caves of all sizes) it is a sort of divination tool. They think that Kohk’s succor to them was in the digging of the first great tunnel. It dug the first cave by chewing up the past that was hidden like ore in the rocks and used it to carve the letters of the story of the future in the shape of that first long tunnel. (also i thought it was hilarious watching the player try to keep a straight face as i told them they have a good Kohk name.)

He opened his drawer and pulled out the book he was reading. It was called Animal Husbandry. He'd been a bit worried about the title - you heard stories about strange folk in the country — but it turned out to be nothing more than a book about how cattle and pigs and sheep should breed.

-Sargent Fred Colon —Terry Pratchett, “Feet of Clay”

Table talk:

For anyone curious about Gurf’n and where the voice and name came from, The voice is sort of my interpretation of Stephen Briggs’ voice for the character Stinky in the ‘Snuff’ by Terry Pratchet audiobook. The goblins of the discworld have fascinated me for a long time, and that’s where i’m drawing a lot of ideas for their personalities and culture (because everything else treats an entire sentient race as trash through a thin veil of 18-19th century racism). The name… is a bit more embarrassing. I have a list of random names in my notes, some are names i made up… and some are random joke names that the boys on My Brother, My Brother and Me come up with to as fill-ins in a skit or when they don’t know a person's actual name in a situation; names like Gillip (Gill+Phillip), Epiphany (Biff+Tiffany), Kregory, etc. And the name ‘Gurf’ was just a name they used sometime when someone was trying hard not to say the name Griffin. I kept it in my notes, and after a while i just thought Gurf’n was a perfect goblin farmer name for a character that in my head was basically ‘just a little guy’.