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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  Natalia’s now withdrawn and greedy after she died last time, remember?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. 

 

Tags: dork training, first D&D game, gaming, homebrew D&D, Homebrewed

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