Homebrewed (for the D&D noob) – Part 13.
This won’t take long. Promise. This session, to date, is THE shortest one we’ve had. This will also be the last one where Jim and I are the only ones playing, as we’ve since invited Phil to join our games. Forgot what happened in the last game? Get caught up here.
Bracell the 24th
Jim and I go for a lot of drives, just to chat and get away from the TV and the computer. And, as you can imagine, our game does come up quite a bit. One thing I had asked Jim: While Natalia is out with Beta and Tango, who is taking care of their puppies?
Jim starts out this game by telling me that the puppies have been in the myconids’ care. I didn’t know little mushroom guys were good baby-sitters–or wolf-sitters, in this case–but apparently, my myconids are. And why not? It’s not like wolves eat mushrooms, anyway, so it could work.
Jim also tells me when we start our game that the wolf puppies are ready to leave Tango. So Natalia starts the game by heading to Raelan’s to not only to suggest they go to the next mage fair, but also to offer him a puppy.
It doesn’t take her long to get there. Once there, Natalia explains that Julium is doing his military thing on Devies and wants them out of the area when he does so, and that going to the mage fair provides us the perfect excuse for being out of town. Raelan agrees that if Julium wants us out, it’s probably a good idea. And, thankfully, there’s a mage fair coming up very soon. He would like to get there around Breizen the 4th.
Natalia agrees. “Also,” she says, “Tango’s puppies are ready to leave their mom. Want one?”
“Yes,” Raelan says. “I want the smallest one.”
Natalia’s not sure why exactly he wants the smallest (I believe Raelan later explained that it will be the most vicious), but she heads back home, grabs the smallest, and runs back to Raelan to give him his puppy.
“Excellent,” he says in that creepy-I’m-totally-going-to-experiment-on-him voice.
“You are not going to hurt the puppy, are you?” I ask.
“No!” he says. “Well…not much, anyway.”
Natalia demands Raelan’s word that he won’t hurt the puppy. He gives it, but I have a hunch he plans on “sprucing” the little guy up to be more than just a wolf. I just hope it doesn’t hurt him, but I don’t think Raelan would do anything too painful to it. For one, he knows it would piss Natalia off.
Raelan suggests that while we’re waiting for the mage fair, Natalia go ahead and scribe some scrolls to sell there. Since druids will be pretty rare there–and because druidic spells can be reverse-engineered for wizards to create new spells–any scrolls Natalia scribes will probably sell well. So Natalia goes off to drop off another wolf-puppy to Grugor, sends an animal messenger to Julium to let him know our plans to be out of the area, and then heads home to make scrolls. She does this until Bracell the 26th.
Bracell the 27th
On the morning of the 27th, Natalia wakes up to some commotion coming from underneath her tree house. She hurries outside and looks down. The myconids have surrounded a guy with spiky red hair and green skin. He is wearing scale mail.
He looks up at her. “Will you call them off, please?”
Natalia comes down, calls them off. Natalia asks for this guy’s name, but he claims he doesn’t have one. No Name says Vueliss wants to see Natalia. Natalia agrees to go him and follows No Name into the Spruce Circle territory.
We finally get to a grove where there are other druids gathered. Here, it is explained that Natalia is being invited to the Spruce Circle. As you know, I hate a lot of its members, and especially its leader Vueliss and his son, Iverrias. But the circle is involved in stuff that would be easier for me to figure out if I were in it, so Natalia agrees to join.
There’s a catch: Admittance into the Spruce Circle requires the druid to make a bogun. What’s a bogun, you ask? Good question. I asked the same thing. If you remember, I had run into them before in the fourth game. And I’m going to steal Jim’s notes regarding them from his comments to that post, just because he describes it better than I can:
…The little bug things are called boguns. And to avoid confusion, the haughty elf she met didn’t make them all. Gury supplied the information that EVERY druid in the Circle must create a bogun for use by the circle to patrol their section of the forest. Boguns are constructs made from natural materials (leaves, twigs, dead turtle shells, rocks, mud, etc)
Okay, so that’s what a bogun is. And now Natalia has to make one. Problem: She doesn’t know how.
One of the half-elf druids nearby explain to her that this is not a problem. Natalia is going to learn how. All Natalia has to do it go into the cave nearby to learn the spell.
Natalia sees the cave the half-elf is talking about. She goes past everyone, goes in, and sees that the cave actually spirals down. There’s a glow at the bottom. Natalia follows the spiral path downward until she reaches the bottom. It opens up into a little room. There are glowing streaks all over the wall. I ask Jim if it’s in a pattern or says anything, and he says not really. Or, at least, Natalia can’t make any sense of them.
There’s also a bed in this little room, with a gnome sleeping on it.
Natalia clears her throat. He wakes up.
“Hey,” she says. “Sorry to wake you. I was told to go here to learn how to make a bogun…?”
“‘S okay,” he says. The gnome has a raspy voice. He hops out of bed, reaches out his hand to shake hers. “How you doin’? I’m Aqueous.”
Natalia reaches out to shake Aqueous’s hand. Jim says when she shakes his hand, she notices that through his leather glove, it feels…squishy.
“Uh,” Natalia says, “that’s an interesting grip you’ve got there.”
“Yeah,” Aqueous agrees. “I’m an ooze master.”
Natalia doesn’t know a lot about oozes, but the title “ooze master” tells her enough. Her intelligence is only an 8, but she’s not totally stupid.
We get to work. Aqueous puts slimy, glowy stuff on Natalia’s hands. At first, I think it’s some mystical junk, but Aqueous explains that it’s actually so we can see in the dark here. He then directs Natalia down a hall, telling her everything she needs to know is in there.
Before she leaves, Natalia notices that one part of Aqueous’s face is slipping. His eye finally droops out of his socket. He realizes and pokes it back in. “There,” he says. “I hate it when that happens.”
Natalia gives him a strange look. “Yeah. I imagine that would be problematic for most people. Well, I’m gonna get started.”
She goes. Behind her, she can hear Aqueous muttering to himself, saying something about how now she’s going to think he’s crazy. And I don’t mean muttering to himself like most people do when they’re trying to focus on something or griping under their breath. I’m talking about someone who actually expects someone to say something back.
Natalia ignores it and keeps going. Jim describes the hallway as seemingly endless. He also says that Natalia feels a deep connection to this place. There is ancient druidic writings on the walls. Natalia reads as she goes, learning the spell. It takes a long time. She finally gets to the point where she realizes she needs materials for the spell before she can go on to the next part.
The materials must be living or once living. Obviously, Natalia isn’t going to find them in the cave, so she goes back out the hall, past Aqueous (who has fallen asleep again), up the spiral path, and out the cave. All the druids that were there earlier are gone.
Natalia goes about collecting materials, such as twigs and branches among other things, and shapes it into something that resembles a cat. I think Jim was disappointed that I didn’t get much crazier than that, but as far as I’m concerned, cats are the most awesome animals EVER and you can’t really beat ‘em, so why mess with perfection?
Natalia takes her wicker cat back down into the cave, back in the hallway again. She creates a circle, puts the wicker cat in the middle, and starts chanting. The connection to the place gets even stronger, but then Natalia feels a part of herself slipping away. Jim explains to me that is a part of her soul disappearing into the bogun.
And then–it’s alive!
Jim then goes into great detail on the connection between Natalia and this wicker cat. I soon find out why he wants me to understand the bond. He tells me that remember, a piece of Natalia’s soul is in this wicker cat. It’s a deep love between her and her bogun; it’s akin to a bond between a mother and her child. Maybe even stronger. Furthermore, she knows, without a doubt, that this thing is very much alive and has feelings.
Which makes the next part so very, very wrong.
Natalia happily takes the wicker cat upstairs and outside. There are druids outside again, waiting for her. This time, though, Vueliss appears.
Vueliss pushes past everyone. “You’ve made the bogun?” A scarred elf stands next to Vueliss, carefully watching our exchange.
“Yes,” Natalia says.
“Good,” he says. He points to the scarred elf . “This is the master of boguns. Turn your bogun over to him. Instruct it to report to and obey him and him only.”
“What?” Natalia asks. “I don’t–I don’t know…” I give Jim a pleading look. This all feels very, very wrong.
Iverrias steps in. “Enough,” he spits. “You knew what all this entailed. Now hand the bogun over.”
No, Natalia did NOT know this part of the bargain. I hate Vueliss. I hate Iverrias. I hate them both.
I get quiet for a really long time at this point in the game, debating what I’m supposed to do. I guess the in-game reflection is that Natalia is gripping onto her bogun, her little wicker cat, also debating, feeling horrified. Nieiumao is also standing nearby, watching the exchange, knowing that Natalia doesn’t want to give her bogun up. He comes over to her. “It’s up to you,” he says. “But know this: If you refuse, that bogun isn’t getting out of here alive. They’ll kill it.”
So, here are my options: 1) Natalia can refuse and they’ll kill her bogun, 2) she can try to run off with it, undoubtedly be attacked by the Circle, and we’ll BOTH be killed, or 3) turn the bogun over and hope for the best.
As far as I can tell, #3 is the only way of keeping my bogun alive.
Natalia puts her bogun on the ground. The wicker cat paws at Natalia’s leg. Natalia can feel its feelings. It doesn’t want to go.
You know, I know this is just a game, but doing this is honestly hard. ”Fine,” Natalia says glumly. She reluctantly hands over her bogun, telling it to obey and report to the master of boguns. It hisses at her and runs away, going to the master.
Vueliss and Iverrias leave immediately after, not caring about the effects their initiation has on Natalia.
“Will my bogun be okay?” Natalia asks a nearby druid.
She pauses. “Hope…that it dies quickly.”
That doesn’t make me feel better at all. Aqueous comes out; other druids, except for Natalia, Nieiumao, Alpen and his gray render Licky, stay away from Aqueous. Aqueous himself explains that he’s not really liked by the other druids, but since he’s the only one who can get past all the oozes to get to the magic in the cave, they put up with him.
Around her, druids gather around Natalia to welcome her to the Spruce Circle. Nieiumao gives her a spruce staff as a gift. People start mingling; a small party has started. But Natalia still feels heartbroken about giving up her bogun.
It’s definitely the worst party Natalia has ever been to. As soon as she can, she heads back home.
Bracell the 28th-29th
All Natalia does on these two days is scribe more scrolls for the mage fair. Once we’re done, Jim tells me a couple of things–out of character, of course.
1) Giving up her bogun = black marks against Natalia. Jim admitted that I picked what I thought was the lesser of the evils, but there was just no getting around it: Giving up a creature that you know is alive, has feelings, and OH MY GOD, SPRING, HAS A PIECE OF YOUR SOUL is an evil act.
Did I argue this? Yes. At least my bogun is alive. I didn’t realize it might not want to be, though.
2) Jim asked that we stop the game here. I asked why. By now, we had played for probably only an hour, if even that. I might get tired quickly, but that’s a short game even by my standards.
And this is where Jim explained to me that the next part of the story would be Natalia’s going to her first mage fair. He did have everything planned out, but in order for it to go as planned, well…he needed Phil.
So that’s it for game 13. We played game 14 last night, our first game with Phil and his character, Iema. (That’s pronounced EE-ma, by the way. Kinda like “emo” with an a at the end.) I’ll try to get that post up sometime this week, but that game was looooong, so it’s gonna take a bit to write up.
Until then.
Tags: bogun, dork training, first D&D game, gaming, homebrew D&D, Homebrewed
June 28th, 2010 at 11:32 pm
That oozey gnome sounded intense. I also felt a twinge when Natalia had to give up the wicker cat. That’s rough!
June 29th, 2010 at 7:24 am
Wait until the next one. We have another “twinge” moment in that one. Jim plays rough!
July 1st, 2010 at 9:03 pm
[...] Okay, brace yourself for a heifer of a “Homebrewed,” an ongoing series documenting the D&D game between Jim, myself—and now Phil! Not only will this be a long post documenting mostly meet-and-greets, but I’m not sure how accurate it will be. Phil and Jim roleplay so fast, that I know that I missed some stuff, so I’m hoping Jim or Phil will catch my mistakes and add them in the comments. Be forewarned, there will probably be a lot of errors, since I’m putting this up with little to no editing, just for the sake of getting this up before the next game. I’ll fix stuff later. Forgot what happened in our last game? You can refresh your memory on our teeny-tiny last game here. [...]