springading.com

This Homebrewed is a little different, in the sense that it’s actually two game sessions rolled into one.  We played Friday night and then, since Phil’s game on Saturday was cancelled, decided to keep rolling with this game on Saturday afternoon.  In the last game, we took on the Spruce Circle and seemed to have won—although Vueliss managed to get away—and wrapped up with the decision that we would push on to the hobgoblin fortress of Kugai, where the diplomat from Cadram had been kidnapped and is being held hostage.  Any questions?  Answers here.

Random quote from this game:

Phil:  Spring, can I take [such and such item] from party loot?

Me:  Sure, whatever, I don’t care.  WAIT.  Natalia’s now withdrawn and greedy after she died last time, remember?  GRRRRR–yeah, sure you can take it.

Phil [laughing]:  I want you to write that in your blog, Spring, just like that.

And so you shall have it, Phil.

We pick up exactly where we left off, right after our “participation” in the sudden, druidic civil war among the Spruce Circle.  That means no new spells.  I was reminded of this after nearly ten minutes of discussion with Phil as to what would be the best new spells to add to my list, completely forgetting that we were picking up on the same day (I had actually forgotten what had happened in the last game!) and Jim was half-listening to the conversation, saying mmhmm, yeah, until suddenly he snapped his head up, giving me a stern look.

“Are you changing your spell list?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I say, “what do you think we’ve been talking about for the last twenty minutes?”

“You can’t.  It’s the same night.  No new spells.”

Seriously, after all that time, listening to me and Phil talk about new spells, and he reminds me I can’t do this after I start erasing?

Jim, you are a butthead.  I love you…but it is what it is, heh.

Luckily, I hadn’t changed out very many, and (surprisingly) I remember everything I had changed.  So I had to change everything back.

Once in order, we get down to business:

Briezen the 14^th

It’s still the night of the 14th, right after the fight, and as we’re about to leave, Julium says, “By the way…we have a traitor among us.”

Huh?

He lays it out for us: In order for the northern Numbrarans to have gotten to the diplomat, someone had to have tipped them off that he was going to be there in the first place. They were given details of layouts, precautions, locations, etc. We’re all suspects, as well as Raelan and Grugor. Julium has ruled out Allista and Roan, stating that they have no motive.

“Eh? What’s my motive?” Natalia asks. My character and I are very much alike, where we’re not very motivated in the first place, and certainly not motivated enough to screw with a would-be emperor’s plans.

“You could have decided to align yourself with the other druids.”

Huh. Well, yeah, it’s true that the other druids were giving them grief in the forest, but that was under the old leadership. Did he not see Natalia help overthrow said leader?

The idea of Natalia wanting to help Vueliss in any way makes me chuckle.

Not about to be left out, Iema asks, “And me?”

Julium looks at him.

“Well, I am a bard,” Iema admits.

“And Shotenese,” Julium adds. “You could be helping them.”

Almost as laughable as me helping the evil druids, since there’s no love lost between Iema and his country.

Secretly, I wonder about Roan and Allista. I hope it’s not Grugor or Raelan, although I did say a long time ago that I could see Jim putting me in a situation where I have to fight one of them, simply because those two are my favorites. I’d be horrified to have to fight them.

“It could also be Beta,” Julium points out.

I’m surprised at this comment; I hadn’t even though of it, but now that Beta is Awakened, he has his own motives. Natalia glances over at her wolf. Beta doesn’t seem amused but doesn’t protest either.

Iema, Corin, and I shrug it off, and we all continue to Kugai. Finally, Jim says we’ve reached the town. Here, he breaks out his battlemap and starts drawing on it.  Sometimes, I think I should take pictures of the map when we play, or at least copy his sketches in Paint because I know I don’t describe the layouts well. There’s a reason for this. It’s because I don’t remember them.  Big surprise, I know.

On the map, there are three stables, a forge, and some building that we can’t identify. There’s hobgoblin stuff everywhere, and everything is covered in cobwebs, including the building.
Before I go further, one could be asking themselves, “Why, if Kugai is supposed so well defended, did the northern Numbrarans take it over so easily to hole up this hostage?” One can also ask, “Why the hell would they kidnap some boring old diplomat, anyway?”

Here are the answers:

1. The hobgoblins that were in Kugai have currently left it much more defenseless than usual, due to the war they’re having with the giants on the other side. Because they’re pretty much gone doing their war thing, it left Kugai wide open for others to take it. Now, you’d think they would have thought of that, but who am I to judge? My guess is that they had to make a choice, and their choice has left their stronghold in the loving clutches of some mighty prissy paladins.
2. Northern Numbrar = not a fan of Cadram. The feeling is mutual. Julium is from central Numbrar, and although Cadram doesn’t really see the difference between Northern, Central, and Southern Numbrar, thinking they’re all a bunch of assholes, Julium is holding out an olive branch to Cadram, hoping to unite with them and then, with Cadram’s army backing him up as well, turning his sights north. Northern Numbrar has figured this out, so they’ve kidnapped the diplomat during his visit to Julium, in part so Cadram’s already strained relations with Julium will snap, since it will look like Julium took part in it.

So now you know why we’re standing out here in a dirty old deserted kobold fortress covered in cobwebs.

Iema says, “Just a hunch guys…don’t touch the cobwebs.”

Suddenly, we hear someone bellow, “The only thing you’ll find here are your graves!”

We turn to where the voice is coming from. Opposite from us, on the other end of the fortress, there is a stone wall. We see a white -plated man peering over the wall. And that’s all well and good. It’s when his nasty spider mount skitters over the wall that we’re a little disturbed.

Iema recognizes the man as Talrich. He’s another big wig of Numbrar, I guess. He apparently thinks he’s a bad ass.  He’s apparently right: Not only does he pull out a shield in one hand, he pulls out a great sword in another. Really, a great sword in one hand. Now there’s something you don’t see everyday.

“Turn back!” he yells.

“As the rightful heir to Numbra,” Julium yells back from where he’s standing, “you should submit to my rule!”

Another form appears from over the wall, this time, a white-plated Halfling. He is also on a spider mount, although it’s smaller than his companion’s. Not quite as BA as Talrich, he carries a longsword. He throws in his two cents: “The rightful heir is Azelai Numbra!”

Julium says, “Then you leave us no choice.”

Jerth starts the combat letting an arrow fly toward Talrich, but it misses him.  Talrich just laughs.  Iema starts getting himself ready, moving closer to Corin, singing while doing so.  I don’t have in my notes what he cast first, but my guess is Haste. Usually Haste and some sort of Invisibility spell are the first things he throws up, with reason: They work well.

And then Beta goes. Beta is acting…weird. Jim says that because Natalia is a druid, she knows that Beta doesn’t actually have rabies, but he’s acting almost as if he does. He’s frothing at the mouth and behaving strangely. He stalks closer to Julium.

Natalia peers at Beta with concern. When she performed Awaken on him, did he become evil or something?

The men, of course, are not concerned with Natalia’s pet. You think they would be since he’s the size of a pony, but men being men, they just want to fight each other and do their little pissing contest thing. Talrich runs up to Julium and tries to slam his shield into him. Jim rolled a nat 1 for the NPC, so as you can imagine, it didn’t work out too well for Talrich.

The spider tries to attack Julium, but it also misses. And then it’s my turn. I have an idea. I tell Jim that Natalia is casting Handfire, keeping it in her hand, and moving closer to the larger paladin.

Corin sweeps past the Halfling, presenting an attack of opportunity. The Halfling starts at him and then stops. Jim explains that as a paladin, the Halfling can’t bring himself to hurt a kid.

“I feel very funny about fighting paladins,” I mutter to myself. Nevertheless, Julium is Natalia’s buddy—in that boring, humorless, will-turn-on-you-if-it-helps-him-become-emperor kind of way—and Natalia’s a loyal if not stupid girl, so if that means fighting paladins, then so be it.

Since the Halfling let Corin slide, Corin manages to get to Talrich and attacks him. Beta jumps in to help, still frothing at the mouth (my first thought was that he was raging or something), and when he bites Talrich’s armor, the metal immediately corrodes.

Talrich looks at Beta in horror. He’s not the only one—Iema and Natalia are shocked, too.

Talrich gets over his horror long enough to step back, whip his head up in Natalia’s direction, and point at her. “VILE SUCCUBUS!”

Huh? What? WHAT DID I DO? SO NOT FAIR.

Iema takes this chance to try to cast Grease on the Halfling’s sword, but Phil rolls a nat 1 and he misses. (If I remember right, there were a lot of nat 1s in this game.) Not giving up, Iema rolls for concentration in casting a blur spell, but sadly, he doesn’t do well on that either, and he blows the spell. Corin, not faring much better, tumbles and falls where he’s standing.

Damn. This is kind of embarrassing.

The Halfling, still refusing to hurt or kill a kid, instead attacks Corin for subdual damage and brings him down, unable to participate in the battle, but still unharmed.

At this point, Iema remembers that he still has a stone salve and downs it. Meanwhile, Natalia, who still has Handfire in her (literally) hot little hand, now shifts into bear form. MUHAHA! I’m a bear with great paws of fire! Well, one paw anyway. I have to do quick check with Jim to see how it actually works, but work it does, so we roll with it.  Sadly, though, I’m catching the nat 1 disease, and I miss.

Beta turns away from Talrich, deciding to go after the Halfling instead. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because there’s enough attacking Talrich, or that the Halfling is the one who knocked Corin out? We’re all a little protective of the kid. At any rate, he’s going after the Halfling, who is backing up toward the cobwebbed covered building and attacking Natalia. After seeing what Beta has done, the Halfling paladin casts something at Natalia—and then looks confused when it doesn’t work.

And I’m confused why he’s confused.

“He thought you were evil, baby, because of what Beta did,” Jim explains to me out of character. “He was casting Smite Evil on you and Beta, but, of course, it’s not going to work.”

Hmph. Of course not. We’re not evil. Drrrr, little pally, drrr.

Suddenly, an arrow plunges into the little doofus, and he goes limp and starts gasping. Guess Jerth didn’t miss this time. Iema jumps in with his own attack, and Beta—oh, this is gross—Beta reaches up, grabs the Halfling with his mouth, and crushes right through him with his powerful jaws. His eyes are glowing.  Er, eye–he only has one left, a reminder from one of the times he died before.

“I think I’m scared of Beta,” Natalia says.

Iema laughs nervously. “Me, too.”

So now we have one prissy paladin left on the field, but the mofo ain’t giving up. Not surprising. Natalia attacks as a Handfirey bear for a nice 31 points of damage. Talrich tries to whirl around to shield bash Iema but misses—good thing because Iema is down a lot of hit points—and then Beta leans over and bites the spider mount. And it does something very peculiar. It shrieks. Its legs twitch, then retract, and then it dies. Jim says it’s not slow or anything. Beta didn’t slowly kill this thing, nor had it suffered damage before. It’s like there was one little bite from Beta and its lights suddenly went out.

Beta is getting kind of scary. I know that once I did Awaken on him, he would start getting class levels, but now I’m starting to wonder class levels in what, exactly.

We don’t have time to consider it, though. Natalia finishes off Talrich, the Halfling’s small spider mount runs off, and we all split up, grabbing a different building, trying to locate the diplomat. Natalia finally finds him, but because she forgets to transform back to a human when she bursts through the door, the poor old man takes one look at her—a big, bloody bear bursting through the door—and pees himself.

Oops.

Natalia shifts back to her human form to reassure the old man, although I’m not sure he’d be very reassured knowing that a 23 year old girl just saw him piss himself. She calls the others over, we gather him up, and we flee to Stilldale, where we agree to spend the night.

Briezen the 15^th-19^th

We’re staying at the Lord Mayor Rengers’s house, so when we wake up and go downstairs to breakfast, we’re not surprised to run in Allista Renger, psionicist and future Mrs. Julium Numbra, at the table with her father.  She’s still as strange as ever, looking at everything but people and speaking in riddles.  Allista manages to focus on us long enough to tell us that Julium took his army to the capital.  She also clues us in on how Julium managed to butter up Cadram—he has agreed to let the leader of Cadram’s son marry his future daughter, thereby securing an heir to Numbra for Cadram as well.

Very clever.

And so this is how we learn that Allista is pregnant.  Allista, as it turns out, knows things already about the baby, which she knows is a girl.  She knows that what the girl’s name will be—and that her daughter will choose it for herself around five.  We question if she can actually see the future, but she tells us she doesn’t.  She just can read thoughts so well, she gets a pretty accurate idea what people are going to do.  Including unborn infants, I guess.

Then Allista starts her strange talk.

“It’s not your fault,” Allista tells Natalia suddenly.

“Uh…what isn’t my fault?” Natalia asks.

“You did the right thing.”  Allista suddenly realizes that nobody has a clue what she’s talking about.  “Oh.  I’m sorry.”

“There is no need to apologize,” Iema says.

“I wouldn’t apologize to you,” Allista says.  “You don’t deserve it.”

Surprised by such a blatantly rude response, Iema asks, “May I ask why?”

“You’ll find out soon enough” is all Allista will say.

We’re baffled, but Natalia has more pressing concerns.  Where’s Beta?  She turns into a dog, catches his scent, and follows it to the graveyard.  Beta is there, sleeping.

Natalia tries to wake him up.  He opens his eye and looks at her strangely.  Thinking that for some odd reason, he doesn’t recognize her as a dog, Natalia shifts back to her human form.

Suddenly, she hears screeching.  The graveyard guardian.  You know, the one that hates her and Roan so much.  Oops.  Forgot about him.

Phil didn’t.  “HAHAHA.  I saw that coming!”

Yeah, well, I didn’t.  Happens when you have no memory whatsoever.  I should have known that Jim was gonna lure me out to the graveyard for something like this.

Natalia gets ready by prepping Handfire, but she’s going to find out soon that it’s a moot point.  As zombies and skeletons start pushing themselves out of the ground and she shifts into bear form, Beta howls.  To Natalia’s surprise, the zombies shrink back, and the skeletons—with swords, no less—push past Natalia, rush the graveyard guardian, and press their swords to their throats.

He backs off.

Beta snorts.  “We should go,” he says in his low voice.  He turns to walk away.  Natalia snuffs out her Handfire and follows her wolf.

And this is how we found out what class levels Beta’s taking: Cleric.  I would have never thought.

We got back to the masion, where Natalia casts Greater Magic Fang on Beta.  You know, before I forget, like I usually do.

“Natalia, do you mind if we stick around Stilldale for a little bit?” Iema asks.  “There’s a lot of magic stuff in the party loot that I’d like to identify.”

Natalia agrees.  However, Iema needs some ivory and incense in to cast his spell to identify stuff, so we go looking for Roan.  Excuse me—it’s High Priestess Roan now.  She’s getting all title-like on us.

When we find her, she’s preparing for a priest’s visit.  She tells us that the priest is coming in to perform the marriage ceremony for Julium and Allista.  We’re surprised and ask why she’s not marrying them.

“My church won’t do it.  They’re marrying for love,” she says.

Natalia gives her a puzzled look.  “Love?  Julium?”  I can’t imagine Julium loving anything aside from power.  Maybe a good piece of armor.  Or socks.  All men love a good pair of socks.

“Well, Allista’s in love with Julium,” Roan clarifies.  “And we don’t support marriages based on love.”  She explains that her church believes that love is unpredictable and that a happy, stable home is built on responsibility and duty—not love.

Iema quickly grows bored of the marriage talk.  Typical man.  “Roan, I was wondering if you have some ivory and incense I could get for a spell I need to do?”

She points in him to the sanctum, where she said he can not only get the materials, but he can also cast the spell. 

Iema goes inside and gets to work, where he spends the next five days.  So, naturally, Natalia has to find other things to do.

Briezen the 20^th-Briezen the 22^nd

It’s the 20^th by the time Iema finishes identifying everything.  He asks Natalia if there’s anything she wants, but as it turns out, there’s really nothing in it useful for her.  “Deck the kid out,” she suggests, nodding at Corin.  The better geared he is, the better protected, and the less we have to worry.

Corin is eager to get his hands on some of the loot.  He picks out a slick chain shirt, some rings, and a magical heavy mace.

Natalia is too busy mulling over the past few days to pay too much attention to the loot.  While Iema was identifying his stuff, Jim did some specific role-play with me (of the non-sexual variety, sadly) to determine what Natalia did during those five days.  What did she do?  Well, she went around “blessing” crops and checking on the town’s animals, as usual, but she did have an situation that’s bugging her:  A man who asks for help with his wife and his unborn child.  Natalia, upon seeing his wife, knew that she had something that magic wouldn’t help her with, and only one of them could live.  Natalia was upfront about it, feeling making a decision as to who to save wasn’t hers to make.  The man left, unhappy at the decision he was about to face.

“You should have lied to him,” Beta had told her.

Natalia had remained firm with her decision aloud to Beta, but secretly wondered the same thing.  If she had made the decision, at least she would be the one they would blame and resent—not each other.

But back in the present, Natalia doesn’t mull for the family for too long, as there are rumors starting to get back to us that the heads of guards wearing Julium’s colors are being found on pikes outside the Devies’s gates.  We also hear about an outbreak of diseases, primarily along the road, although we don’t think one event is necessarily tied to the other.  Just more things to worry about.  Iema wants to check it out, but Beta has other ideas.

The wolf stands up.  “Home now,” he says in his low voice.  We don’t have a chance to ask him what his rush is; he turns around and starts for woods, toward the treehouse.  Iema and Natalia shrug and follow.

It’s been FOREVER since Natalia has been in her treehouse, and thankfully, Jim tells me that Natalia sees that the trees in her territory actually seem healthier.  Beta looks for his wolf pups—who, incidentally, while young, are about full-grown now—and goes hunting with them.  Before he leaves, he makes a joke to Iema about “showing them the faith.”

We decide to just relax a bit around the treehouse.   During this time, Iema crafts some new songs; later, he and Corin will discover the myconid tunnels under Natalia’s treehouse and go exploring.  Meanwhile, Natalia finds that her deeds around the woods have attracted some groupies (of sorts, heh) and they’re starting to move into her territory.  Among them, there is a grimalkin named Jervin, who turns out to be sociable.  He asks if he can stay in the area (of course) and tells her about other followers in the area, such as a moose and a dryad.  But then he gives her a bit of information that, in hindsight, I wished I had ignored:  He tells her about another follower in Natalia’s territory, an eagle, who had spotted a boy and a girl running in the forest.

At this point in the game, I was getting really tired and crabby, so we wrapped here.   Too bad.  Because the next day, I was awake enough to be curious about the lost boy and girl in the forest.

Briezen the 23^rd

The next morning, Natalia hunts down the grimalkin.  The day before, Jervin was in the form of a cat; now she finds him outside her window as a blue monkey.  “Hey, Jervin,” she says, “about the boy and girl…did the eagle say which way he saw them?”

“That way.”  Jervin points southeast.  Iema suddenly pops out of the window, trying to figure out who Natalia’s talking to, but Jervin pretends he can’t talk.  He makes monkey noises; Iema shrugs and walks off.  He’s not that interested in Natalia’s strange habits of talking to animals.

But we don’t need him to talk anymore.  Natalia suggests we look for this boy and girl; Iema agrees.  So we head southeast.  We don’t have a lot to go on, but it’s better than hanging around the treehouse all day.

We roll and finally hit an encounter.  Jim says about three miles away, Beta stops, sniffs, and glares at a tree.  Natalia looks up.  Jim has me roll a spot check, which I nail with a nat 20 roll, and he tells me that Natalia easily picks out blinds in the tree’s canopy.  She has to point them out to Iema before he spots them.  Iema tries to climb up the tree, falls, and we all laugh.  Then Corin shimmies up the trunk and climbs in.  He calls out that there’s a dead guy in it.

Natalia and Iema climb up after Corin.  The dead guy is an wood elf, his heart cut out, and from what we can tell of the wounds on his wrists and ankles, he was definitely butchered up by manufactured weapons—specifically, a scimitar.   He was laid out to bleed to death. 

“It looks like some kind of ritual,” Natalia comments.

Corin searches.  He finds bows, daggers, and a pendant of Hommirell.  “I think he was a ranger.”

Iema finds initials “TKR” on the tree, but it doesn’t mean much to any of us.

We decide there’s really nothing else we can do here, so we climb back down and press on.  After a couple more rolls, we get another encounter.  This time, we’re about halfway to a river when we hear a strange noise.   After a little snooping, we realize that it’s lizardfolk counting and hauling some trees.  We stop, offer to help, but they seem suspicious and ask why we’re offering.  It eventually comes out that we’re heading in the same direction because we’re looking for a boy and girl lost in the forest.  The lizardfolk warn us that there are drow about and to stay away from trees with shells—that marks their territory.  But once they hear of Natalia’s eagerness to kill some elves, they decide she’s all right and give her a club to go elf-killing with.

But we’re done here.  We’re tired of wandering aimlessly.  Natalia turns into an eagle, flies a little bit while Beta stays with the guys, and finally spots the boy and the girl.  They’re well dressed but very obviously lost.  Natalia flies back to the others, gathers everyone together, and they finally catch up to the boy and girl.

 We don’t want to startle them, so Iema starts playing his mandolin.  They spot us, and at first they seem nervous, but Iema quickly puts them at ease.  Soon, they’re telling us their dilemma:  They’re a couple from northern Cadram who wants to get married—

“—but your parents don’t approve,” Iema finishes.

The boy looks embarrassed.  “That cliché, huh?”  He composes himself before continuing.  “We’re trying to get to Derrikol.  But we’re being followed.  We didn’t get a look at them, but they had this on them.”  He shows us a little crossbow bolt.  Corin turns pale.

“Drow,” he hisses.

What they’ve also seen seems to fit the pattern:  They, too, have spotted a trapper with the heart missing.  Uneasy with the idea of letting a young couple wander around the forest by themselves—and certainly uneasy that there are drow about—we tell the kids that we need to hurry up and get them to Stilldale. 

Wouldn’t you know it, though, we run into eight ogres, complete with spiked clubs and some badass looking tattoos.  They demand the women, then just the civilian girl.  The boy guards her protectively, while Iema insists that they don’t want to mess with us. 

But of course they do, and we get into a big old fight while the kids hide in the bushes.  I’m not going to go into the entire encounter because this is already long, and we’re about to have bigger problems.  Suffice it to say, we walked out of it—the ogres did not.

We keep on truckin’ toward Stilldale.  And we’re close.  We can even see the lights coming up ahead when we hit another encounter.  I roll a nat 20 on Natalia’s spot check, so she sees—not quick enough, I’m afraid—the seven drow about to ambush us on either side.

Immediately, there’s a mass dispel cast on us and we’re all pelted with sleep arrows.  The arrows miss the young couple.  Several of us get hit and are down when the drow then cast Darkness and move in on us.  Beta grabs a scroll of Neutralize Poison off Natalia and uses it to get the poison off Natalia.   So Natalia wakes up, sees nothing but blackness, and thinks Ah, shit, not again.

Since she’s experienced drow before, she immediately knows what’s going on, and she’s much quicker about getting up and shifting into bear form this time around.  However, she gets a surprise:  The darkness disappears, and we finally get to see the results of the mass dispel:

The girl is a drow.  What.  The.  Hell.

One of the attacking drow in robes comes forward and casts Dispel on the boy.  Turns out he’s a drow, too.

The attacking drow start slashing the shit out of the girl.  She’s crying and pleading with them.  They turn around and start on the boy.  Beta and Natalia start killing some of the attacking drow.  But Natalia is pissed.  She’s wondering if the young couple lured us into a trap.  At one point, she whirls around on the couple, about to attack them, she’s so pissed.

Then, when  she hears the attacking drow yell to the couple to surrender, she wonders:  What if it’s another illusion?  Can they do that?

To be safe, Natalia decides against attacking the couple.  Better to kill the ones that we know are against us, right?

Besides, the couple’s not fighting against us.  The boy bull rushes one of the attacking drow to keep it from attacking Natalia; the girl throws herself on Corin, who is passed out from the poison sleep arrows, and gets hurt herself while trying to protect him.

Surely, I think, this couple can’t really be drow, protecting others like that.  Right?

While Natalia is debating, a drow wizard slaps a tree trunk and casts Darkness all over again.  Natalia’s a bear now, so she uses her scent to locate them.  Their scent is faint, and finding them is somewhat just plain luck:  when she does find them, she whiffs out the faint scent of aniseed to help protect them from getting sniffed out.

These bastards were prepared.

We finally kill off all the attacking drow.  Natalia whirls around on the kids.

“Are you really drow?”  she demands.  “Because if you are, I’m killing you.”

Jim tells me that they look really scared, but they admit to being drow.  “Our story is true, though,” they insist.  “But we have to be disguised because nobody believes us.”

Natalia, very obviously, doesn’t believe them.  She tells them just as much.  Iema is hesitant, then he says, “You did protect my apprentice, and for that I’m grateful.”  He votes to help them because, even if they are drow, he feels obligated to them for saving Corin’s life.

Natalia reluctantly agrees because, honestly, Iema is right.  “I still don’t trust you guys,” she tells them, but she reasons to herself that as long as they keep an eye on the drow couple, they can still escort the kids and clear their conscience.  They’ve just got to be careful.

Before we go, though, Natalia gets their names.  The boy’s and girl’s names are Zerich and Vaelika respectively, but they’re going under the fake names Serich and Vaela.

The drow couple put their illusion disguise back up, and we take them to Stilldale.  I’m not sure how Iema felt about it because, hell, I’m not Phil, so I don’t play his character, but Natalia does feel a little funny bringing drow into town.  We find an inn, we all sleep, until Corin wakes us up to tell us that a professional bounty hunter is looking for us—all five of us.

The drow couple is nervous, but they put their disguises back up.   We go to see the bounty hunter, who is this big, dark guy who looks like he might have some half-ogre blood in him.  His name is Drugle, and it turns out he’s a well-known bounty hunter—and his specialty is drow.

He has already heard that we’ve had some run-ins with drow.  The disguised couple feigns innocence as we describe our encounter with drow—and the corpses they’d left behind—that we’d seen just the day before.  Drugle thanks us for the information and tells us that he’s going to talk to the trees and animals in the forest to see if he can find out more.

Crap.  That will definitely get us in trouble.

Iema suggests we buy horses and get the hell out, which we do.  We fly out of town and head to Devies.  Right before we go into town, Iema disguises all of us and we head through the gates.  We find another inn.  Natalia, still very untrusting, decides she’s going to check out the wanted posters to see if Zerich and Vaelika are as innocent as they claim.

The couple wants to go to the inn.  They’re worried, telling us that their disguises won’t hold much longer.  Natalia doesn’t trust them to be alone, so she asks Beta if he’ll stay with them while she goes out of the town and Iema sells some stuff.  Beta agrees.

Natalia heads out, makes a beeline for the posters while Iema goes to sell some stuff in the party loot.  To Natalia’s surprise, the drow couple aren’t listed anywhere.  She’s not sure if she’s relieved or disappointed.  She turns around and is about to head back when she’s stopped by what she overhears some other bounty hunters saying.

“What the point?”  one of them grouses.  “Drugle is in town.  He gets all the good ones.”

What?  Drugle is in Devies already?  It’s too much of a coincidence.  Natalia and Iema come to the only logical conclusion:  Drugle knows about the couple and is following us.

We rush back to the inn.  On the way, we notice the inn has smoke coming out of it; we hear screams and growls coming from within  We panic.  Drugle apparently even knows where we’re staying.  We break into a run, burst into our room.

The room is full of smoke.  Jim tells us we have to make will saves.

Now, this encounter didn’t last long.  Even Jim thought the encounter would last longer, especially because both Iema and Natalia have pretty high will saves.  But we’re all surprised because it doesn’t matter:  Phil and I both roll terribly, so Iema and Natalia both fail their will saves.

And we’re about to find out just how terrible that is.

Iema can vaguely make out what looks like Beta fighting something humanoid.  Iema tries to attack whatever the hell, but having failed our will saves, we’re both frozen.  Beta then muscles between us and goes out the door.  We hear whispering.  We can make out someone saying, “I think we got them.”  Then, we hear the sound of the cork of bottle popping.  The smoke dissipates.

We see two demons in our room.  The disguise drops.  It’s the drow couple.

At this point, I’m going, “I KNEW IT.  I KNEW IT.”  And I’m mentally kicking myself because HEY, finding these little fuckers was MY stupid idea in the first place, and even when I SAID I was going to kill them, I DIDN’T, and WHY CAN I NOT DO WHAT I SAY I’M GOING TO DO, OMG, I DO THIS IN REAL LIFE TOO, OMG, I SUUUUUUUUUCK.

We weren’t totally surprised about the drow couple, but one that that did shock us?  Drugle, the drow hunter, sauntering into the room, obviously in cahoots with Zerich and Vuelika.

“Good boy,” Vuelika coos to Beta.  “See, I told you we wouldn’t hurt them.”  Jim says that we notice that Beta’s eyes are glazed over.

Phil groans.  “Mind control.”

Eh?  What?  I didn’t know drow could do that!  And this, people, is one of the many, many times I’ve screwed Natalia because of what I, as a player, don’t know about this damned game.  Grrr.

The Evil Trio quickly gets to work on us.  They strip the frozen Natalia and Iema of all worthwhile gear, leaving them only in regular old clothes.  They take all our gear, put something down our throats to make it difficult to talk (and, therefore, difficult to spellcast), and mage cuff us.  Beta, still mind-controlled, drags a passed out Corin into the room. 

Then it gets really bad.  

The drow freeze Beta and start pricking him with poison needles.  When they finish with him, they hover over Corin.

“Now,”  Vuelika says, “tell us where Julium is.”

We don’t say anything.

“Tell us where Julium is,” she repeats, “or we’re going to have to do something to the kid.”

Natalia sits there sullenly.  Iema, on the other hand, lies.  He starts making up various places.  The drow don’t believe us and pluck a fingernail out of one of Corin’s fingers.  Natalia is thankful that Corin is passed out and unable to feel what they’re doing to him—for now.

“Try that again,” Vuelika says. 

Finally, Natalia spits out, “Do you honestly think that Julium is going to tell us where he’s at?  He knows there’s a spy around him, and we’re suspects, too!”

The ranger butts in.  “You know,” he says, “I could always just rape the boy.”

Finally, Iema loses his cool.  This is the first time Natalia has ever seen him lose his temper, not that she could blame him.  “I swear to God,” Iema threatens, “if you so much has harm a hair on his head, I will kill you.  I will make you so sorry…”

Vuelika rolls her eyes.  “We will not do that to him.”  She orders the men out.  After they leave, she turns back to us.  “Whether you want to believe it or not, our story was true—once.  But everyone kept after us because of what we are.  Contrary to popular belief, we are not all the same.”

Natalia glares at her.  “Looks pretty much the same from where I’m sitting,” she croaks in her broken voice, thanks to that stupid pill they’ve jammed down our throats.

They keep on asking us questions;  Iema keeps lying about Julium’s whereabouts.  By the end of the night, they’ve made sure that we’ve had no sleep, and they have removed one of poor Corin’s fingers.

Briezen the 24^th – Briezen the 25^th

We’re exhausted after being questioned all night, but the drow aren’t done with us yet.  They cast their spell to make themselves looks human again.  Then Vaelika and Zerich cast the same spell on us.  I get a sinking suspicion, and Jim confirms it:  They make us up to look like drow.  The couple argue briefly what to do with Beta.  One of them—I don’t know who, but probably Zerich—thinks they should just kill Beta.  Drugle, however, won’t have it.

“That’s a strong wolf, good wolf,” he says.

So it’s decided that Beta will not be killed.  Natalia and I are both glad for that.    They shove the wolf under the bed.  I wonder how large the bed is, since Beta is a big damn wolf.

We’re led out the door.  People in the town are staring at us, believing the illusion, thinking we’re actually drow.  Some spit.  It’s pretty damn awful.  We’re loaded into a back of a cart and taken as prisoners. 

The next day, we have an encounter, probably a chance at escape with that encounter–one that we missed entirely.  We run into another group of travelers while camping.  They’re in awe of the “drow” and peer at us curiously.  When they’re not looking, Vaelika mouths Not one word.

We probably should have done something.  But we were too worried about what the drow couple would do next.  As it is, the travelers don’t make it out before Vaelika and Zerich kill them.

Briezen the 26^th

We’re back on the road again.  We pass paladins from northern Numbrar.  They eye us curiously.  Iema treats them respectfully, but the paladins don’t seem to consider that it’s odd behavior and let the cart pass.  We keep heading to…well, wherever the hell it is we’re heading to.  Finally, we make it to Derikkol.  We’re taken out to be put on a ship.  People are throwing rocks at us.  Iema spots Corin’s mother in the crowd.  She’s also throwing rocks.

Iema and Natalia get on either side of Corin, hoping to block his view so he wouldn’t see.

We’re loaded into a boat and thrown in a cell below deck.  After some talking around, we find out we’re not the only ones who have been fooled by the drow couple.  We’re all being taken as slaves to Fasset, home of the Scaled Emperor.

Ugh.

Briezen the 27^th

The morning comes.  The boat is still docked.  When Iema and Natalia wake up, they hear Corin crying.  Iema tries to comfort him with little luck.  We’re given bread for breakfast, which we find out from the other prisoners has crap in it to screw with our voices to inhibit our spellcasting.  Natalia seriously considers not eating it.  Hell, she considers starving herself to death just to piss them all off.

Instead, she eats the fucking bread. 

We’re about to pull out.  Jim says we hear a horrible sound outside.  We manage to get a look out the window.  Poor Beta is on the shoreline, looking forlorn and howling.

He must feel so guilty.  Not that it’s his fault the bitch had some charm thing she could work on him, but still…he must feel bad.

Corin must feel better after a little breakfast.  His skills as a rogue are starting to come in handy:  He starts to work on our cuffs.  Iema can’t really do his bardic stuff to help, so he does a little dance to help as best as he can, seeing that’s he’s cuffed and all.

Given our bleak circumstances, it’s pretty funny.

Corin does have some luck.  He’s managed to pick his own lock, but he doesn’t have success with Natalia’s.  He slips his cuffs back on to look like they’re still functioning.

We’re at sea for the next 20 days.

Chilldenor the 17^th 

We finally arrive in Fasset.  The first thing Natalia sees are the massive cliffs, about 400-600 feet high.  We come in through a channel, what’s called the Chute.  It’s supposed to be crazy-dangerous.  The boat anchors, and we take a peek out the windows.  We see a plethora of races:  Sea elves, marrows, some guy that is bluish-white with water dripping off his skin.  Some people wearing some simple robes with blue bands on the cuffs come in.  We find out they’re looking for spellcasters, checking all of us for any magic buffs or anything showing that we’re spellcasters.

In Fasset, spellcasters are whisked away to be taken to use their services for the city and for the Emperor.  Non-spellcasters, however, are whisked away to do much shittier things.  Once Corin extracts this information from Iema, he slips out of his picked cuffs, quickly puts a magic buff on Iema, and slips back into his cuffs.

The robed figures stop at Iema.  “You.”

Iema goes along with them willingly, and eventually, they get Natalia and Corin as well.  We have all come to the conclusion that it would be better to admit our spellcaster status rather than end up in the slavemines.

They question us about various things.  While doing so, they have a spell set up so that if we lie, the candle they have lit will go out.  Apparently, even sarcasm is considered lying:  Natalia makes a snarky remark about always wanting to meet the Scaled Emperor, and her voice suddenly comes out as a squeak.

The robed people tell the ogre captain that they’re taking us with them.  We’re taken to a slimmer ship docked next to the one we’re currently on.  Here, they put us in collars but the mage cuffs are taken off, at least.  We’re warned that spells won’t work with the collars on, and trying to take them off will land us in the Astral Plane.

Already, this ship is better.  We’re given dinner, checked on by healers, and taken to our rooms, which, as Jim describers, are about as nice as a motels.  Beats the cell, but Natalia is still grumpy about the whole thing.

We stay here for five more days.

Chilldenor the 23^rd

We all have our own guards assigned to us, mostly to find out what we can do.  Jim says Natalia’s guard is very considerately pointing things in the city that would be of particular interest to a druid.  Natalia is completely unappreciative and ignores most of what the guard is trying to show her.  No matter how nice the lady is, it doesn’t change the fact that WE’RE FREAKIN’ PRISONERS.

Iema, meanwhile, is given his first assignment.  He’s taken back into that room with a candle.  He recognizes that the truth spell is in effect.

“Arclings can recognize each other, right?”  one of the guards asks Iema.

Well, it’s not like Iema can lie.  He confirms that this is true.  They bring in a woman.

“Is she an arcling?”

Iema doesn’t look happy about doing it, but he says, “Yes.”

The woman freaks out.  “Traitor!” she yells.  “You traitor!”

Iema shrugs and points at the candle.  They take the female arcling away, who is distraught about being identified.

Yup, this looks like this is how life is going to be for a while.  Welcome to Fasset.

Damn it. 

 

And so another weekend passes–and another birthday.  I’d say Jim’s been wonderful to me all weekend but, while true, it’s doesn’t mean much because he’s always wonderful to me.  That, in itself, is what makes that actually mean a lot.

He didn’t just save it all for today, though:  It started on Friday night, when I got home, although Jim says that technically, it wasn’t for my birthday.  He teased me a bit about having a “sexy surprise” waiting for me when I got home from work.  Friday afternoon, I was going to go crazy trying to figure out what it was.  I even told my co-workers about it.

“Bet he’s planning a trip,” one suggested.

I ruled that out.  For one, we had plans for the state fair on Saturday.  Also, while our money situation’s been improving, we don’t have the funds for an out of town trip right now, especially with a wedding on the (still somewhat fuzzy) horizon.

“Now I’m kinda curious what Jim’s getting you,” another said.

“Well, depending how just how ‘sexy’ it is,” I said, “I might not be able to tell you!”

Guess what?  I won’t be able to tell them.  Let’s just say that we ate dinner kind of late that night, haha.

Saturday, we went to the state fair.  Nothing much to be said there.  Initially, we were going to ride a few things, then we decided not to.  I didn’t want to spend money on it, honestly, and really, I wanted to go just to watch Jim eat the shit out of roasted corn.  He thinks about the fair’s roasted corn there for the remainder of the year, and he looks so happy eating it, that it’s worth the price of parking for that alone.

Also, he got to high five a monkey.  That was cool.

This morning, I mostly just played Warcraft while Jim watched Huff, loaned to him by a friend of his at work.  I half-watched it.  It seems all right from what I’ve seen.  It made me remember my original plan, though, when I went back to SIU to get my degree:  I was going to get a degree in English with a minor in psychology, and then head off to get a graduate degree in psychology.  But then, you know, it turned out I had a knack for writing, people tried to convince me to go get an MA in either fiction or poetry, so I got distracted with writing stuff, but then I got a divorce instead, and then I was semi-homeless, and now I work at an insurance company trying to pay off bills that came with the divorce fallout.

School seems so very far away right now, although the plan (keeping fingers crossed!) is that Jim will go back in the spring.

Don’t ask me how a wedding in the middle of the spring semester is going to pan out.  Somehow, I don’t think teachers will Jim out of finals for a honeymoon.  Bah!

To sum it up, it was a great weekend.  Aside from taking me out, Jim also bought me Dexter–the book, not the DVDs, as we already own all those–and the third season of Roswell.  Woot!  Now I have the whole series.

By the way, our DVD collection is totally growing.  If we keep going at this rate, we’re going to need to move into a bigger place just to fit our DVDs and books, heh.  Seriously, we have seven bookshelves, and we STILL have books shoved into closets and dresser drawers.

Anyway.  The weekend has been full, eventful, and lovely–I even got most of the next “Homebrewed” written!–but alas, all great things must come to an end.  It’s almost 9 PM.  I’m gonna pack a lunch for tomorrow, tear Jim away from Huff, and maybe convince him that Sundays can be just as sexy as Fridays, heh.

Think it will work?  It’s got to, right?  Because he’s got to do what I want–my birthday isn’t over yet.

I’ve been having a lot of dreams lately.  I don’t know what’s going on with my brain, but it’s like something unlocked, and it’s going to town on the dreamfront.  Last night, I had a dream that Jim and I had a large, ranch-style house with many doors.  We were sitting at the table, figuring out expenses for our wedding.  In the dream, the size of the wedding had grown, and so had the price, especially since we planned on paying for everyone’s hotel rooms. 

Thank god we don’t plan on any of this–you know, many people or motels or anything like that.

Anyway, Jim left through the door to get something.  I followed him, setting a big box of soda down as I did.  Don’t ask me where the soda came from.  So we went outside, went through another door to another section of the house, went back outside, and then started back through the original door that lead to the dining room.  Unfortunately, I had very stupidly left the soda box right in the doorway, and Jim tripped over it.  And he hurt himself–bad.  He started screaming.

The weird thing?  I woke up at this part, and I could still hear him screaming.  But there he was next to me, in real life, sleeping peacefully.

Jim thinks the audio thing is kind of weird–you know, how I could actually hear it while I was awake.  Is this uncommon?  I didn’t think it was. 

Anyway, as usual, I’m about to head out to work.  At least it’s Friday.  I’m even more anxious than usual to get home tonight because Jim claims that he’s got a surprise for me, that it’s got to be tonight (maybe that’s why he insisted on cancelling game?), and–interestingly enough–it’s not related to my birthday.

Gotta say:  I’m curious.

Me:  I had another dream that you cheated on me last night.  Why do I keep having dreams that you’re cheating on me?

Jim:  I’m not cheating on you, Spring.

Me:  I know that.  When would you have time? 

Jim:  Remember how you said you I’d be scared before the wedding?  Well, don’t you think that works both ways?

Me:  You mean that my brain is trying to scare me with the worst possible scenario and force me to prepare for it, just in case it happens?

Jim:  Or putting up roadblocks.

Me:  OR it could be because you’re actually doing something that you know I wouldn’t like, and my subconscious is blowing it out of proportion in order to make me pay attention.  So, Jim…did you do anything you know I wouldn’t like?  Might as well tell me–can’t be as bad as cheating.

Jim:  Well…I did leave my socks on the floor yesterday.  Deliberately.

Me:  …

Jim:  Yeah, I was like “I’m over here and the closet’s over there.  Fuck it!”

Me:  That’s not exactly what I had in mind…

Okay, seriously, I’m gonna work on “Homebrewed.”  This week.  Really!  I mean, I’m two games behind, and both those games, incidentally, were two sessions long each, so it’s kinda like four games, AND I’M FREAKING OUT.  Well, not really, but maybe a little bit.  I might have extra time for writing, though:  Jim was talking about his game next weekend, I reminded him that my birthday is next weekend, and then he decided that he was cancelling everything.  Of course, I was like, Jim, seriously, you don’t have to cancel everything.  My birthday is only one day.  I would prefer to do what we had planned on Saturday because, honestly, I hate Sunday and think it should be stricken from the calendar.  Sadly, my birthday falls on Sunday. 

But, no, he wants to cancel his weekend stuff, which makes me feel kind of bad.  But I think his brain needs a gaming-break anyway.  I think Phil and I have been working it too hard, heh.

God, I’m tired.  We stayed up a little later than usual finishing off Dexter season 4 (AWESOME!) and having a little bit of “couple time” (bow bow chika chika bow bow !) before bed.  Also, we got up a little earlier, anticipating more traffic with the college kids starting school again, but alas, even with classes, most college students are not up at 6:30 AM.  You’d think I’d remember that.

Hey, look, it’s time for work.  What else is new?

Last night, Jim bought me season 4 of Dexter, “just because.”  He says this is because I’m always buying him DVDs, and he wanted to return the favor.  Works out well, since we both love the show.  Except I always end up getting frustrated by the close calls Dexter gets into because of his “hobby”:

Me:  Arrgh!  Dexter, if you’d just stop killing people, you wouldn’t keep getting in this mess!  JUST STOP.  It’s easy!  I don’t kill people all the time!

Jim:  I don’t know, Spring.  I think it’s a little like Pringles:  Once you pop, you can’t stop.

Jim’s so funny.  Speaking of Jim being funny, he posted on his blog pictures of the cthulhu we got from Ruth “meeting” the Hearthstone soap we got from Emma.  Unfortunately, he didn’t give it a title, so I can’t link to the entry directly.   You’d just have to go to his site and look at the August 19th post.  Right now, it’s the first one listed.

Grr boo hiss…I’ve got to get dressed for work.  But at least it’s Friday, right?

[Edit:  Jim went back and added a title to that entry I mentioned, which is here.]

After leaving the apartment this morning, I was greeted by a woman sitting next to the stairwell right next to my door, while she was talking to someone on her cell phone and smoking.

Woman:  Hi.

Me:  Hello.

Woman:  Excuse me, but are you one of the students that goes to the college?

Me [looking at my Blue Cross Blue Shield lunchbox, my Blue Cross Blue Shield T-shirt, and my Blue Cross Blue Shield name badge]:  No.

Spring exits stage left.

All kidding aside, wasn’t it kinda obvious?

Interesting–I had a dream last night that featured a some of my family and a bunch of old friends, all of whom no longer live in the area.  It’s been a while since I dreamt about anyone other than Jim and made-up people, although Jim was in this dream as well.  In it, my old roommate proposed to his girlfriend.  And I was like, HELL, YEAH, I TOTALLY CALLED IT.  But he bought her this gigantic ring that could have fit an elephant.  Seriously.  But at least it was pretty, just really…big, heh.

Other stuff, other stuff…let’s see.  Jim updated his blog again, this time talking about Valt’s setting and what separates it from other settings.  Jim’s really been on a roll with updating his blog lately.  It’s nice.

Speaking of Valt, I’ll probably start working on the next “Homebrewed” tonight while Jim is at game.

Other stuff: I might have some news, but I’m not sure, so I’m gonna keep my mouth shut for now.  Also, I was approved to get a week off in September.  I’m excited!  But I have no idea what I’m going to do.  I would love to go somewhere, but since I really can’t afford it, I’m probably just going to sit tight at home and relax.  It’ll be nice.  And Jim’s looking forward to having the car to himself.  (Normally, I drop him off work and he takes a cab or walks home.)

Okay, I’ve got to be out the door in, oh, two minutes.  See ya!

I have nine minutes before I have to be out the door, but I wanted to pop in really quick while doing my morning rounds on the Internet.  So, I don’t have a lot of time.

• Jim followed up my last “Homebrewed” post with a post of his own about drow.  He talks about why he likes putting drow in his games.  I growled the entire way through reading his post.
• Speaking of which, this week, I really want to get the “Homebrewed” up, even more so than usual.  Then my newfound hatred of drows will make sense.
• On a different subject altogether:  We were asked for our shift preferences at work, and I got my first pick!  My current schedule was also my first pick at the time, but I picked it back when 1) I lived with my sister and needed a later schedule in order to get the car from her when she worked thirds and we did the car swap at 8:30 in the morning, 2) I played Warcraft with my friends until 1 AM.  Nowadays, I can’t seem to stay up past 10 PM and I wake up early, anyway.

Most of my posting is done in the morning, save for the “Homebreweds.”  I’m not sure how I’m going to fit posting in, but I’ll figure it out.

Three minutes left.  I’m gonna hustle.

 Well, I’d say “gear up for another ‘Homebrewed,’” but truthfully, this session was relatively short, due to yours truly getting exhausted at about 9:30 PM, a mere 2 1/2 hours after we started playing.  Working overtime all week and then doing game on Friday night after work…yeah, it’s rough.  But if you remember the last game, we ended it by preparing to go to war with the Spruce Circle.  Well, really, Vueliss; some of the other druids are actually okay.  So this game, we witness the show down.

Briezen the 14^th

It really is too bad that I was so tired during this game, as this one was the game I had been looking forward to:  The confortation with Vueliss, head of the Spruce Circle, our very own General Dick.  As we prepare, Jim asks to see my spell list.  After glancing over it, he says Natalia’s little dragon head clasp is suggesting that Natalia swap out Cure Serious Wounds with Rusting Grasp.  Now, I understand swapping out the Cure Serious Wounds–my necklace allows me to swap out any spell for that level of a Cure spell, but I don’t get why I would bother with Rusting Grasp.  Nevertheless, I comply.

Iema, Natalia, and Corin get to Raelan’s, the agreed meeting place.  Julium is already there, along with his follower Jerth, atop a skinny black horse.  As for Julium, he is wearing shiny armor.  On it, there is a symbol of a skull with a knife through it.  Jim says that we recognize it as the symbol of the Numbraran emperor–and only the emperor can wear it, under the penalty of death.

Julium sure as hell knows how to make a statement.

As we approach, Julium greets us and tosses Iema a cloak.  Iema examines it and recognizes that the images on it symbolize him as the messenger.  Remembering what pissed people tend to do to messengers, he gulps nervously, but he puts the cloak on.

“You’re the messenger,” Julium says, in case we didn’t catch on.

“All right,” Iema says, “but what’s the message?”

“This.”  Julium reaches for a bag and tosses it at Iema.  “That’s the message.”

Out of character, Phil tells Jim that he accepts it, but he’s not looking inside.  Good call.  Because, while it’s probably obvious to all of us what that message probably is, it’s still pretty gross.

It’s time to get going.  Since Natalia is the one most familiar with the Spruce Circle, she morphs into a horse and leads everyone to their territory.  Iema is nervous when she gets to a river  because he can’t swim.  When he looks again, she appears to be walking across the water.  He realizes that she’s taking them across a secret, invisible bridge that she and the other druids know about.  He relaxes.

We cross the river, and finally, we get to Spruce Circle territory.  There are lots of druids around.  They’re all around us, even some hanging in the trees.  Everyone falls to a hush as we approach.  Natalia reverts back to her human form.  In the back, she spots Vueliss (boo hiss), his asshole son Iverrios (who looks MIGHTY pissed), and Nieniemao, the red-skinned elf that Natalia, despite her distrust of elves, grudgingly has to admit she likes.  And there is another druid that Natalia hasn’t seen in a long time, since back when we first started:  Virbéné, the very first druid I ever met, the half-elf druid who hung out with the gnome Rosco, the one I called “Creepy Lady.”

I wonder what happened to Rosco?

Vueliss points at us.  “Kill them!”

“No,” Nieniemao is quick to step in.  “We are not going to kill a bard, especially one that has a message.”

Vueliss isn’t happy about it, but he gives in.  As Jim has told us before, bards are very highly regarded in Valt.  Even though Natalia is a druid, Iema would probably be considered more highly than she would be.  Notice that Julium didn’t give her the message?

(Probably doesn’t help that Natalia isn’t very subtle about her dislike for Vueliss, either, OR his son.)

Iema starts forward.  He gets about halfway between us and them before Vueliss stops him.  “That’s far enough,” he says.  “The message…take it out of the bag and show it.”

I don’t think Iema, suspecting what was in the bag, was too keen on having to reach in and pull it out, but he complies.  Phil tells us that Iema still doesn’t even look in the bag.  He just pulls the object out.

Jim confirms what we suspect:  “It’s an elven head.”

I’m secretly glad that Natalia doesn’t have to do this.

Phil says that, as Iema, he is very gentle with the head, still trying to show it respect.  See, this is why Phil is a better bard than I would ever be: I imagine Natlaia whipping it out carelessly, trying to use it as a sock puppet, speaking in a Cookie Monster voice the entire time.

So Iema gingerly handles the head.  The head turns to Vueless and the eyes snap open.  Suddenly, the elven head speaks–in Julium’s voice.

And this part is so awesome, I have to put it in a quotation box!

Vueliss of the Spruce Circle!  Some time ago, you gave me a choice: either withdraw all of my people and dismantle our buildings, or you would wage war upon us.

So in return, I give YOU an offer.  Surrender to me, or be destroyed.

If we do not have your surrender within the next minute, I shall march upon this forest with every man at my disposal.  We will level every tree, and march with engines of war built from your very homes.  We shall slay every creature of the forest, and use them to feed our troops.  Our battle standards will be painted upon canvases of your skin, flayed from you and your children.

I am engaged in a war against other forces, and can ill afford to have another enemy at my back.  Drop your weapons, withdraw your forces, and surrender to the rightful Emperor of Numbrar.

Upon hearing this, Vueliss grows pale.  This is the first I’ve ever heard of Vueliss being scared.

Virbéné starts to reach for her pouch, but she doesn’t get a chance.  Nieniemao springs on her and slits her throat.  He whips around.  “NOW!”

What does “now” mean to us?  Why, DRUID ON DRUID ACTION, THAT’S WHAT.  It’s a civil war!  All the druids in the Spruce Circle start attacking each other!  Apparently, Natalia wasn’t the only one of the Circle who was unhappy and frustrated with its leader’s evil leanings.  She’s as excited to be watching the druid on druid action as much as a school boy is to watch actual girl on girl.  Except, you know, without the Catholic guilt or the mess, heh.

We roll for initiative.  I think Jim’s happy because I’m ready with my dice, excitedly saying THIS IS WHAT I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR, I WANNA KILL VUELISS AND IVERRIOS!

Sadly, I don’t remember the order of our initiatives.  I doubt I went first, as Natalia’s initiative bonus is only a 1.  Personally, I think there should be certain scenarios in D&D where, if the player gets to a scene that their character has been DYING to get to–in this case, Natalia finally gets to openly attack the evil Spruce Circle members–then there should be, like, a temporary initiative bonus.  I mean, really, she’s been itching to kill this guy, then she gets her golden opportunity–and she hangs back just because I happen to roll lousy?  That doesn’t make sense to me.

But what do I know?

The first thing Natalia does do when it comes to her turn, though, is cast Barkskin on Corin.  I’ve been trying to remember to keep defensive skills on my list for the kid.  Another one I like to keep on my list is Invisibility to Animals, figuring that should we run a situation where animals are the bad guys, that would at least save Iema’s Invisibility spell.  Speaking of which, Iema casts Invisibility on Corin, in attempts to keep the kid a little safer in the ruckus.  Handy little spell; Natalia wishes she had it herself sometimes.  Although, honestly, given how I run my character, it wouldn’t suit her anyway.  This is one aspect where Natalia isn’t like me:  She doesn’t talk much (which, okay, is more like me), but damn, does she enjoy a fight.

Julium decides it’s time to jump into action himself.  “IMPERIUS REX!” he yells, whipping out a sword, lightning bolts crackling from it.  Iema rushes over to Julium and quickly casts Haste on the emperor before casting Invisibility on himself.  Jerth steps back behind Beta and seems to disappear.

Jim tells us that suddenly, it seems like the world around us has grown black.  Being that I’ve never experienced this before, I’m confused; I’m even more confused when Phil, getting suspicious, starts muttering, “Oh, no…”

Out of character, I wonder what’s so bad that it’s getting Phil worried.  In character, something rustles in the darkness, attempts to hit Iema–not that Natalia can see this–but she does feel something whack her for a good 10 points of damage.

I am not quick thinking; therefore, neither is my druid.  I’m utterly confused by why everything went black.  Jim ever so politely suggests that I could try getting out of it.  Get out of it? I think.  This seems absurd.  Didn’t he just TELL me that the world went black?

Well, turns out he didn’t mean literally.

I take his suggestion.  I move Natalia her standard move action on the battlemap (30 feet) and tell Jim that Natalia calls Beta out with her.

“You see a dome of blackness where the battle was,” Jim says.

This is where Phil gets animated.  “I KNEW IT.  I KNEW IT.  I KNEW THAT FUCKER VUELISS WAS DEALING WITH DROW!”

Oh.  Shit.  Now, I don’t know a whole lot about drow.  But when Jim and I first started dating, he bought me Homeland, so pretty much, everything I know comes from that book.  And what I know is this: Drow are evil, evil, evil.

But I don’t know much beyond that.  That’s going to bite me in the ass in the next game.  You’ll see.

Meanwhile, Jim says that although Natalia has stepped out of the darkness, the dome moves over and engulfs her again.  There are now two domes of darkness on the field.  In the other dome, where I know that they have both darkness AND silence going on (I’m not sure about the one I’m in), Iema gets hit and takes 20 points of damage.  Feeling desperate, Natalia blindly casts Entangle, hoping the area of effect spell with catch some bad guys in it.  And, yeah, while it slowed things somewhat, it also proved not to be the best idea I’ve ever had, either.  Why?  Well, for one, some good guys got caught in it, too.

Case in point: Julium, the Numbraran Emperor himself.  Jim-as-Julium rolled crappily for him, and Julium ended up stuck in Entangle for a while.

At first, Natalia and Beta are about the only ones who make their reflex saves and stay out of the Entangle.  Luckily, even though it’s dark, Beta can sniff out the bad guys, pinpoints one, tries to attack but misses.  Corin can’t help because he’s stuck.  Iema, I believe, is also stuck, and Phil rolls his ever-so-useful bardic knowledge (at least, I think it was bardic knowledge) to see if he could figure out why he’s caught.  Phil rolls well, so Iema identifies it as Entangle.  So he knows at least it’s one of Natalia’s spells.

One of the bad guys breaks out in Iema’s Dome of Doom.  Iema feels blood spray on his face, but he doesn’t know if it’s one of ours or one of theirs.  Phil says, “If this is drow blood, I’m licking my face.”

And this is how I found out that Phil really, REALLY hates drow.  Because that’s a pretty gross thing to say and, my guess?  You’d only say it if you really hated someone.

Or if you’re some kind of creepy stalker.  Which, you know, Phil isn’t.  Although if he wants to be a creepy drow-stalker, he can be my guest, because between this game and the next, I’m growing to hate drow with a vengeance myself.

Again, you’ll find out.  Meanwhile: Back to this game.

Natalia’s done screwing around.  She turns into a brown bear.  Sadly, she’s got a little more time to screw around because that pretty much uses her turn.

Beta attacks the guy he’s sniffed out again, bites, and manages to trip the enemy.  Score!  Julium, however, is still trying to get out of the Entangle.  Natalia and Beta attack, but with the darkness factored in, we’re not doing so hot and we miss.  Iema manages to wriggle out of the Entangle, but between walking over the vines and the darkness around him, he’s slowed to a quarter of his normal speed and can’t go far.

More reflex saves, more people Entangled:  Julium and Corin still, and now Beta and Jerth.

Natalia is still out and finally manages to get a swipe in on somebody.  So she’s happy about that.

Further away, Iema has managed to drag himself out far enough away to realize he can hear again.  He moves further away and surveys the situation.  He sees ahead of him two globes of darkness, one of them appears to be centered on the square Natalia’s in, almost as if something has been planted on her.

Back in the Dome of Doom, Jim rolls for Julium again to see if he manages to get out of the Entangled.  He does!  Then I roll.  Nat 1 on both my attack AND my reflex save, which means I’m caught in my own Entangle.  How embarrassing.

Iema can feel someone draw a bow back nearby, but he doesn’t see them.  He’s hit.  The arrow, turns out, does Con damage.  He’s at a -9 now.  He does a face-plant on the ground.

Natalia isn’t having much luck.  Thankfully, Julium is out of the Entangle and smarter than I am.  He does something with his sword–Natalia misses it and Spring-the-player didn’t catch it, either–but suddenly, it seems as if all the magic has been sucked into the weapon.  Natalia looks over and spots Iema, facedown on the ground, arrow in his neck.  It’s obvious that Jerth did it, presumably on accident due to the dark.

Presumably.  Not sure if I mentioned this, but neither Natalia nor myself trust Jerth a bit.

Besides Iema on the ground, we also see two dead drow.  And although we can at least see, we still can’t hear.  We move out of the area.  Nearby, the druids are still having their own battle.  Nieniemao is busy fighting Vueliss.  Jim says at this point, they’re not even using spells anymore.  I don’t know why.  Maybe they blew them all earlier.  But now, Vueliss and Nieniemao are down to fists, just beating the hell out of each other.

Elves or not, underneath it all, they’re still just men I guess, heh.

We hear booming footsteps and turn to see a forest giant running toward us.  I think Natalia peed her pants a little.  As luck would have it, Aquaeous drops down from a tree, slimes it, and it drops .  The Ooze Master is gleeful, sliming all his enemies in his path.  Many start clawing at their faces, trying unsuccessfully to get the slime off.  And let me tell you, the results are not pretty.  One of them gets crazy enough to stab himself in the eye.

Natalia is secretly grateful that while most of the other druids ostracized Aquaeous, she was nice to him.  She wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of that slime.

Ahead, Natalia sees a dire bear.  We wonder if she’s gonna have to fight him, but as it turns out, she doesn’t have to–Big Shroom bursts out and attacks him.  Did you guys know that fungi could be all B.A.?  Because I sure as hell didn’t.  Around Big Shroom, smaller myconid archers are peppering baddies with bows.

Gury–remember Gury, the old, naked guy?–runs up to us.  You’d think given our scenario, he’d be wearing gear, but nope, he’s still naked, just covered with mud.  “Hey, what’s up?” he says cheefully.  He sees Iema’s injured, heals him up entirely, and jaunts off to join the battle.

We don’t have much time.  An elf that looks remarkably like Iverrios comes storming toward us.  Jim says we’d guess him to be Iverrios’s brother, yet another son of Vueliss.  Julium quickly charges him, Jerth close behind, firing arrows at the doppleganger.

The lookalike does a curious thing: He drops his mouth, way lower than any elf’s should be able to go, like a lizard’s, and splays scaled fingers.  Phil calls it immediately: “A half-dragon?”

I’ve no clue what a half-dragon is, so Jim and Phil quickly explain it to me before we get back into the fight.  God, how many kids does Vueliss have?  Man, that elf is a slut.

Natalia jumps into the battle, misses, and then Beta gets a bite in.  Iema, remembering that the myconids had given us potions, quickly downs a potion that protects him from the elements.  Turns out it was a moot point, as Julium and Jerth together brought the half-dragon down quickly.

There’s a small break in the waves of baddies, and Natalia uses the time to put a rushed heal on Jerth.  Once done, we turn to see that the crowd has parted.  Iverrios is standing there, looking smug.  I don’t know why, since Julium and Jerth just totally bitch-slapped his way badder-looking brother.

Iverrias casts Flame Strike on us.  He pointedly laughs at Natalia.  “You think you control nature?” he howls.  “I control nature!”

Leopards and wolves bound away from their druid, quickly surrounding Natalia and Julium.  Julium shakes off one leopard, stabs it in the neck, and then turns to elbow a wolf back.  Beta kills another leopard.  Natalia starts summoning a dire lion.  Iverrios tries to counter-spell her summon, but luckily, he fails, and I got me a mighty big cat on the loose.

During all this–I don’t know when–Iema started singing one of his bardic songs.  The nice thing about bards:  They add to stuff, so we’re all doing extra damage in the fight.  Iverrios gets pissed and starts frothing.  This is when we realize that Iverrios isn’t just a druid–he’s actually raging.  Uh oh.

He turns into an even bigger bear than Natalia can ever hope to be, I’m afraid.  Sure, she’ll get Dire Bear next level, but even with that, it’s dependent on your actual size, and, well, Iverrios is just bigger.  The group is still trying to clear out Iverrios’s pets: Beta takes out a wolf near Jerth and the summoned dire lion kills another leopard.  The dire lion is now flanking with Natalia, but sadly, she misses.  Iverrios, spotting Iema nearby, attacks the bard, knocking Iema down half his hit points.

Julium then swings in on Iverrios.  The frothing druid, sensing that Julium is probably the real threat around here, turns his attention from Iema to the fighter claiming to be emperor.  On Natalia’s go, she misses the leopard RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER (how annoying) while Beta jumps in to help Julium with Iverrios.  Natalia sends the dire lion to assist on the evil-druid-gone-dire-bear, and holy shit, even though the dire lion did 60+ damage, it STILL didn’t take Iverrios down.  Iverrios, however, did manage to kill my dire lion.  I wasn’t thrilled about that, I must admit.

Before I can swear vengeance, Julium, Jerth, and Beta take Iverrios down.  I’m disappointed that Natalia didn’t get a piece of him herself, but I’m glad that Beta’s the one who did the final blow to that asshole.

Then Julium does something just nasty.  He gathers the two brothers, Iverrios and that unnamed half-dragon we “met,” from the ground, and spears their heads on his greatsword.  He lifts it up.  Around us is still pandemonium.  Alpen, the child druid, and his gray render Licky are nearby, along with Big Shroom, and they’re lifting stone statues and bashing bad guys with them.  (Well, Alpen isn’t, but Licky’s doing it for him.)  Despite our victory, we’re still surrounding by lions, eagles, and other various animals fighting each other.  There’s also what feels like a light acid rain falling, stinging our skin.

The elves are starting to scatter, though, and the evil members are trying to escape.  They run toward something, as if they’ve found a way out, then they slide, stumble, and lose their way.  We hear giggling.  Jim hints that it’s some fairy creatures’ doing.

I remember meeting the insect guy at the mage fair, the one trying to sell that instrument to Iema, and how he had warned Natalia that the fairy folk were getting sick of Vueliss bossing them around.  HMMM.  Allies I had completely forgotten about.

Virbéné makes another appearance here.  We thought she had died when Nieniemao slit her throat, but apparently, she survived it.  “We surrender, we surrender,” she says desperately. 

I actually feel sorry for her. 

Julium, however, doesn’t.  He kills her outright, and she crumples to the ground.  “Too late,” Julium says.  “No mercy.”

Natalia, for a moment, just looks at Julium, rolling that over in her mind.  Julium’s her friend, but…she doesn’t like this “no mercy” stuff.  Which, again, as you’ll see in the next game, will bite us in the ass…

Regardless, Natalia bites her tongue and after about 20 minutes, the fighting dissipates.  The battle is over.

Iema, Corin, and Natalia must have gotten separated from Julium somehow, but Jerth seeks them out, telling them that Julium wants to meet with them.  We group up with him, go to the Circle, where Nieniemao is now in the lead’s chair, where Vueliss used to sit.  Nieniemao, we notice, has lost a hand during battle.

Julium stands in front of the new druid leader.

“Vueliss escaped,” Nieniemao says.  “We knew about some of the stuff he was doing that we didn’t like, but even we had no idea that he was consorting with drow.”

Iema speaks up and tells Nieniemao about the “other brother.”  When Nieniemao looks at him questioningly, Iema describes the half-dragon.

“What kind?” he asks.

Jim reminds me that Natalia saw a resemblence between him and the black dragon that she had fought before.   She tells Nieniemao.  He shakes his head in disbelief.

Iema suggests showing Nieniemao the body.  “Did Beta already bury it?” he asks.

Almost as if on cue, Beta turns very suddenly and trots away.  We assume he’s getting the body, but when he doesn’t come back soon, we realize we’re wrong.

“Where’d he go?”  Iema asks.

“I don’t know,” Natalia says.  Beta doesn’t come back.

There’s a bit of clean-up going on around us.  Despite all the carnage, there are few bodies around us, a Aquaeous’s slime and ooze-things are taking care of it.  We see Aquaeous himself, petting a gelatinous cube containing prisoners.  The prisoners are frozen inside the gelantinous cube, faces contorted in horror.  Faces that, I might add, are dissolving.

“Good cube, good cube,” Aquaeous says lovingly.  He licks it.

Okay, he really is a messed up little guy.

Nieniemao and Julium get down to business.  Nieniemao says he won’t help Julium, but unlike Vueliss, he’s not going to hinder the fighter’s war efforts either.  Julium seems to think this is fair; I don’t think he actually expected druids (except Natalia) to help him, anyway.  But just having them not attack him and his men from the woods helps tremendously.

“Very well,” Julium says.  “But I have to leave now.  I have a diplomat to save.”  He turns from Nieniemao, huddling with those of us who will go with him.

He quickly lays it out for us:  The kidnapped diplomat was snatched by the Lord  Polsen Numbra, the same one who defeated Jovos 20 years ago.  I was surprised by this information.  Someone who took on Jovos is running around kidnapping people?  HUH.  We also learn that Lord Polsen Numbra had come in through Derikkol right around the time of the mage fair, so he could try to take over the hobgoblin fortress of Kugai and stop Julium.

Things start to click:  We now know why Jovos left the mage fair in such a hurry.

Julium says we have two options:  Go to Kugai where they’re holding him tonight, when they’re not quite prepared yet, or to go in the morning, when they will be.  We opted to push on for the night.  Sure, we’re down spells, too, but at least we’ll have the element of surprise.

Before we leave, we turn to spot Tango, wolf-turned-centaur and Beta’s former lover, talking to Nieniemao.

“Oh,” Natalia murmurs.  Suddenly, Beta’s leaving makes sense.  Poor Beta.

Iema, being the friendly one, greets Tango.  Natalia still has mixed feelings, torn loyalties between Beta and Tango.  I imagine it’s what divorced kids feel like with their parents.  Tango greets us both, but I notice she doesn’t ask about Beta or their pups.

I’m a little bitter about that.  I cannot lie.

As it turns out, being a former wolf makes Tango a bit of an outsider to the centaur that she now lives with.  As such, she has been serving as the liason between them and the druids.  The centaur sided with the fairy creatures to help drive out the evil druid.

Nieniemao turns to Natalia.  “Natalia, do you plan on staying with the Spruce Circle?”  he asks. 

Natalia doesn’t even think twice.  “I wasn’t going to, but if you’re in charge, yeah, I’ll stay.”  Then she pauses.  “That doesn’t mean I can’t go help Julium, does it?”

“No,” Nieniemao says.  “If you choose to help Julium, that’s your decision and we will honor it.  That’s what a druid circle is supposed to do.”

Natalia nods.  “Then, yeah, I’ll stick around.  But I’m going to help him.”

So it’s all arranged.  We heal up and, while it’s still dark, creep toward Kugai.

Note:  Special thanks to Jim for writing up Julium’s counter-demand to Vueliss, so I could post it.  I remembered it was impressive and wanted to have it written here, as close as possible to what Jim actually said in game, but knew I would never remember it right.  So…thanks, Jim!