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 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!

Welcome to the 17th installment of “Homebrewed,” brought to you by exhaustion and Coke.  And not the illegal kind, either, although I suspect it would do something about my exhaustion.  At any rate, probably not a good combination, and certainly not as good as Cthulhu like the last game, but there you have it.  In this game, Iema, Natalia, Raelan, and Corin are still at the mage fair, which is quickly coming to a close.  Which is fine.  I think we’ve seen enough mystical carnies for a lifetime.  If you have no clue what I’m talking about, you can check out the last “Homebrewed” here.

 Briezen the 5^th

Okay, peeps.  Since I have to crunch out two “Homebrewed” in a very short period of time, we’re going to play a little game.  It’ll be called how much Homebrewed can Spring pump out super-duper fast?  Except it won’t be fun and it won’t be resembling a porn title like that name I just came up with.

So!  Without further ado:

It’s the final day of the mage fair.  I announce to Jim that I want to Awaken Beta.  I’d explain it to you, but I’m pumpin’, people!  Hence, the link, click it if you’re interested.  Long story short:   Beta now has human-like sentience.  Couple that with the warbeast template Jim used to “upgrade” Beta, he’s much more beefed up.  Jim says to tell you all that it adds 2 hit dice, +3 strength, +3 con, and trains him to accept a rider. 

However, this spell requires me to stare at my panting doggie in the dirt all day.  So that’s how Natalia spends her last day at the mage fair.  Which means that the last day at the mage fair saw way more action from Iema and Corin than Natalia.  Let us commence:

This is a story about a man and his boy…

Er.  Let’s not do that.  It sounds very, um…”ancient Greek,” yes?

This is a story about a bard and his apprentice…

You see how I “justify their love”?  Hahaha!  KIDDING.  KIDDING.  Okay, seriously.  PUMPING.  While Natalia is getting a faceful of dog-breath, Iema and Corin go to the admin tent to tell Jovos that the druid-killers are gone.    However, Jovos isn’t there.  Lasiter tells Iema and Corin that Jovos left in a hurry, only advising that Jovos thought it best not to stick around.  He then gives a lumpy black metal with some windy pieces sticking out of it to Iema as payment, tells Iema to do whatever he wants with it.  Lasiter isn’t in the mood for pleasantries; he’s also rushed.  Iema does detect magic, and by the third round of it, Jim says it shuts down.  Iema feels like his eyes are getting sucked out, like the object literally absorbed his detect magic spell.  Corin checks it out and announces that it’s fever iron, which is immune to magic.  Fever iron, he says, is adamantite that is hit by lightning.  There’s quite a bit of is in Corin’s homeland, the Jade Islands.

Iema decides he wants to show Raelan and Uliver his new prize.  He and Corin head back to Uliver’s.  Jim says there’s some sort of invisible shield in front of the door, so he can’t get in.  Which, Iema is about to find out, is lucky.  He calls for Raelan’s help, and as soon as Raelan sees him with the metal lump, he shrieks, “ARE YOU CRAZY?  GET THAT OUT OF HERE!”   He takes his staff and pushes Iema further back from the door.

And that’s how Iema and Corin find out that not only is fever iron immune to magic, but the larger the piece, the more unpredictable it is.  This one is large enough to undo Uliver’s PORTABLE MANSION (always in caps, remember?) and kill all of them.  Good thing they have the invisible shield, eh?

Iema explains where he got the fever iron and remarks that Jovos left in a hurry.

“That’s it!  Everyone get out!”  Uliver panicks, waving people out the door.  “If someone like Jovos was nervous enough to rush out of here, there’s no way I’m sticking around.”  As soon as everyone is shoved out of the door, Uliver teleports the hell out of there.

(Chicken.)

Iema wants to know more about the fever iron, and since Corin mentioned that there were lots in the Jade Islands, Iema decides that a wizard from the Jade Islands would be the best bet.  He meanders around the fair until he finds one.  When he asks her for her assistance, she seems suspcious at first.  She asks if he’s a “dine,” which I guess is a Shotenese noble. (Sidenote:  Jim describes the country of Shoten is being very Japanese-like in nature.)  Iema admits that he isn’t, that he didn’t always see eye-to-eye with his people and chose the bardic life instead.  He asks for information on the metal; or, if she would like, she can purchase it from him.  The Jade Islander wizard then talks to Corin in their native tongue.  Corin pulls out that nice dagger we bought him a couple games ago.  She turns to Iema.  “You know this is not an artifact, right?  It’s just a magical weapon.”

Iema did not know.  Neither did I.  Hell, in this part of the game, Phil and Jim had to explain to me what an artifact was in the D&D world.  Because I didn’t know already, I couldn’t share in Phil’s disappointment because I always thought it was just a nice dagger in the first place.  See, ignorance really is bliss!

The wizard goes back to talking to Corin in Jade Islander again.  Corin then turns to Iema and explains that since Iema came to her to buy the iron, he must want the sale more, and so she thinks Iema should offer her something.  Personally, while I was listening to this and taking notes, and I was thinking 1) what a money-grubbing bitch, and 2) she would totally be my mom’s idol, hehe.  (Not, uh, that my mom’s a bitch because she’s seriously the sweetest woman on the planet, but she IS the coupon queen.)  Anyway, Iema agrees to give her information on Shoten.  It’s not like there’s any love lost between him and his country, anyway, from the sounds of things.

Something that I noticed Iema is very good at:  People will demand information from him, and he’ll freely give it, but whether they mean to or not, they always end up giving him information, too.  I guess that comes with being a bard.  And I don’t think this woman intended to give him information, but she did.  She started talking about the Jade Islander legend of the Green Keel, which (she says), is not a myth.  The Green Keel is a boat that (again, she says) is alive.  She says it can do things that other boats cannot.  Example:  Long ago, giants sailed out of Fasset along the Nubraran coast and to Jade Islands.  Only the Green Keel was larger than any of their boats.  Turns out the giants weren’t completely stupid; upon seeing the Green Keel, they turns tail and left.  The Green Keel followed them, headed them off.  Eventually, the giants lost the Green Keel.  Or so they thought–when they finally arrived at their own ports, the Green Keel was waiting for them.  It sank every one of their vessels.

I was impressed listening to Jim-as-the-lady-wizard tell this story.  Now that is shit legends are made of.  That also explains why the Jade Islands are considered the masters of the sea in this world.

After they’re done swapping stories, Iema asks the wizard for her name.  She only introduces herself as the Gray Lady.  She leaves.

“Corin,” Iema says, looking a little embarrassed (or I imagine he does anyway, heh), “just so you know…it turns out that dagger isn’t an artifact.”

As it turns out, Corin already knows.  Hell, he probably figured it out before we did.  After all, he’s a smart kid–WAY smarter than Natalia.

Back in my dirt-patch on the night of the 5th, Natalia’s spell is complete.  I finally talk to Beta, aloud, like a human, for the first time.  Guess what?  He doesn’t have much to say.  

Briezen the 6^th-9^th

By the 6th, the fair is over, and Raelan chooses to go hang out with his wizard-friends at some bar rather than go with Iema, Natalia, and Corin.  I imagine he’s gotta rub robed-elbows or something to get ahead in the world.  Whatever–we’re leaving, but to make things go a little faster, Natalia turns into a horse so Iema can ride her (keep your dirty thoughts to yourself) and Corin hops on Beta.

In a day or so, we reach Derrikol again.  No encounters.  We keep going.  The second day is also uneventful.  We keep on truckin’.  Finally, Phil rolls a 12 on a D12, which means we’ve got an encounter, folks.  And a nasty one at that.

We don’t have have time to size up the enemy; we’re straight into combat as an arrow flies through the air and pins Iema’s arm to his side.  He falls off Natalia-the-horse and lands on the ground.  Another arrow sails through the air and hits Corin.  He slides off Beta and is also knocked out.  Natalia looks over to see who has attacked us.  She recognizes it as a forest giant, about 18 feet tall.  ZOMG.

Immediately, Natalia summons a dire lion, who charges the giant while Natalia shifts back.  Beta also lunches in, bets, and tries to trip the giant.  She just shakes him off, turning instead toward the dire lion, and killing it.

Damn.  DAMN.  Just like that, huh?

The giant then announces that this land belongs to the Spruce Circle.  Natalia shapeshifts back into her human form.  “I am part of the Spruce Circle!”  she spits out.  “Ask them!”

The giant eyes her warily.  “Then what is the leader’s name?”

In real life, this took scrambling on mine and Phil’s parts to try to remember his name.  Jim, by the way, was not going to help us on this.  After much swearing up and down to Jim that he would TOTALLY NOT GET LAID IF I DIE IN THIS COMBAT, I remember:  “Vueliss.”

Satisified with that answer, the giant says that she can leave but Corin and Iema can’t.  Then, deciding that would be too merciful, she changes it to Natalia can live but she has to kill Iema and Corin.  And, in typical Natalia-fashion, she refuses the giant flatout–and resumes combat.  Between Natalia and Beta, we get some bites in as well as a Poison and eventually bring the giant down.  Corin and Iema wake up.  While Natalia heals herself and Beta up, Iema collects the loot.  Turns out the giant has lots of loot.  I’d tell ya about it, but I don’t record the loot.  You’d have to ask Phil.

Now, the giant also had some interesting stuff on her that I did make note of:  Elven bread and leaf rations, furthering evidence that the Spruce Circle is, indeed, behind attacks on travellers in the forest.  Natalia explains to Iema what happened while he and Corin were out.  Corin seems quickly grasp how pissed Vueliss is going to be if he finds out we just killed his giant.

“Gee,” he jokes nervously, “it’s too bad she fell on her own club.”

We all laugh but quickly agree we need to get rid of the corpse.  Beta attempts to bury her, but she’s too big.  Finally, Beta suggests that we burn her.  We set up a funeral pyre and leave the scene as quickly as we can.

Brizen the 10^th

We finally get to Devies.  When we get there, the gates are closed.  The guards demand our names.  I’m not doing well with names today, and I try to remember the little nickname that the townspeople of Stilldale gave me.  Finally, I remember, and Natalia says, “Natalia the Stillwitch.”  Wincing while she says it, incidentally.

With that, they let us in  but quickly close the gates behind us.  As soon as we’re in, Beta dumps Corin on the ground.  Just because he accepts riders now doesn’t mean he likes it.

“Hey,” Natalia scolds him, “could you at least give Corin a little warning next time before dumping him like that?”

Beta grunts in response.

Around us, there are lots of people walking around in armor.  A guard approaches us, telling us that he’s been instructed to bring us into the hall.  We go with him.  The City Hall has changed since Natalia last saw it, as now it is covered in scorch marks.  We go inside to a room with a circular table and a map of the world.  Sitting at the table is Julium.

Awesome.  Just the person we wanted to see.

This is Iema’s first time meeting Julium.  He seems impressed.  Behind Julium is Allista, peering at Iema strangely.  She tilts her head.  It dawns on me at thsi point–and probably Phil, too–that Allista, the ultimate mind-reader, is probably wondering what’s keeping her from reading Iema’s mind.  (Remember his ring of mind-shielding?)  Of course, we’re also probably reminded of this because Jim suddenly asks Phil which hand Iema is wearing the ring on.  (Answer: right hand.)

At this point, Jerth, Julium’s cohort, steps forward and introduces himself, shaking Iema’s hand.  Suddenly, Jim has Phil run some sort of check, one that I didn’t catch.  I guess Phil failed it because he feels a rummaging inside his brain.  Apparently, Corin feels it, too.  “What the heck is THAT?” he says, shaking his head.

Jerth politely returns Iema’s ring to him.  Apparently, he had swiped the ring of Iema’s finger during the introductions.  “Sorry about that,” he says to Iema, “but we have to be careful.”

“They’re clean,” Allista announces.

Once it’s been verified to Julium that Iema and Corin aren’t traitors or out to get him, the gossip begins.  We tell him about the mage fair, Raelan’s presentations and their potentials, how he has potential allies in the Palm Circle, how we met a Lady Harod of the Guild of Scholars, who told us he was wanted–

“She’s dead,” Julium says.  “She was found rended outside on the gates.”

Oh.  Poor lady.  Even if I was suspicious of her wanting to get Julium, she seemed all right otherwise.

Julium continues that he needs to take care of Vueliss.  Julium is trying to deal with Cadram and bury a very old hatchet with them in order to proceed with his plans, but Vueliss’s attacks are making it difficult.  He wants to send Natalia in to talk to him.  She sincerely hopes by “talking” to Vueliss, Julium actually means skinning that evil elf Willow-style.  (Er, Buffy reference, if you didn’t catch it.  Sorry.  Just know that it’s gross and evil and he’ll be very, very dead.)

Before she forgets, Natalia sends  a message to Raelan via her clasp, letting him know to be careful in the woods.  Something that makes me infinitely more nervous:  The druids want everyone outside the Spurce Circle dead, which would include wizards.  Raelan’s tower is protected from being found by everyone but druids.  Ugh.  That’s a nightmare waiting to happen.

We decide to go to bed, as it’s in the wee hours of Briezen the 10th (I think) that we get into town, so we wake up on the actual morning-morning of Briezen the 10th the next day.  The first thing Natalia does is cast Greater Magic Fang on Beta.  I want to check out my treehouse to see how it’s holding up.  Iema agrees to go with.  On our way to the treehouse, we get an encounter. 

Jim says we hear arrows flying.  This scenario is eerily familiar.  But it’s worse:  This time, an arrow goes right through Corin’s temple, killing him instantly.  Iema soon after finds himself stuffed with two arrows himself.

Ahead of us, we find 13 people.  There’s a bunch assembled, 4 men across, 3 lines deep.  Behind them, there’s a sergeant or something of sorts.  They’re all human and in uniform.

The sergeant yells, “Surrender!”

“On whose authority?” Iema yells back, hopping of Natalia-the-horse.

Sensing that I’m being ignore because they think I’m an actual horse, I tell Jim and that Natalia is going to wander off into some bushes, shapeshift back, and wait to see if she’s needed for spells or anything.  Before she wanders off, she signals to Beta to stay with Iema.

The sergeant yells back that his name is Sgt. Oshwin.  Ever the diplomat, Iema asks if he can talk to Sgt. Oshwin personally to discuss our terms of surrender.

Suddenly, we hear footsteps of someone running wildly towards the scene.   Then we hear then screaming.  Then we see a tall, gangly orc with tattoos on his face jump in from behind and start going ballistic.

“It’s Grugor!” I say excitedly.  Grugor is defintely, by far, my favorite.  We haven’t had in our game in what seems like AGES, so I’m glad to see him back. 

Grugor jumps in on the sergeant and gets hit hard.  Iema quickly dives into battle by casting hast and improved invisibility.  Natalia, from the bushes, casts Ice Storm.  Which, by the way, is a lovely spells, causes lots of damage to lots of people–I highly recommend it for some awesome SLAUGHTER.

Another arrow comes from nowhere, but this time, it’s not on Team Evil–it actually is aimed for the sergeant’s neck.  It hits.  Blood pours out of his mouth and he keels over.  We quickly look around, but we have no idea who aided us. 

Not that we had much time to find out.  There is, after all, twelve other people to contend with.  Beta gets some bites and trips in.  Natalia is still at her secret spot, doing Flame Strike now.  Iema, invisible at this point, dodges the bad guys and gets Grugor back up and running.  One of the baddies tries to run away, but the moron gives Beta an attack of opportunity, which Beta took, killing the guy swiftly.  Good pup!

More soliders try to run away.  Iema casts haste on Grugor.  We think the idea of a hasted, raging half-orc barbarian is hilarlious.  Iema also heals Grugor up.  He’s doing way more healing in this battle than Natalia is, that’s for sure.  Speaking of, Natalia is now casting Entangle because the rest of the soliders are starting to flee.  Sadly, Grugor is the only one who fails his reflex save and thus the only one who actually gets entangled.  Beta runs toward the men and also gets entangled.

SIGH.

Still, though, Beta at least manages to get another guy nearby and kill him.  Meanwhile, Natalia casts another Entangle.  (Yes, I love Entangle so much that I usually keep about 3 on my spell list at all times.)  This time, the Entangle catches the remaining guy.  Iema sneaks up behind the remaining guy and, as Phil says, does “sticky sticky” with his weapon. 

Beta finally gets out of breaks out of his Entanglement and Natalia dispels Grugor’s.  (It took a little bit for me to remember that I could do that.)  Grugor doesn’t waste time.  He rushes towards the remaining baddie, lifts Beta out of the way (no small feat, considering that my wolf is the size of a horse), and finishes the last guy off.

The poor Grugor collapses to the gorund, panting.  Between me and Iema, we get the half-orc healed up.  We loot.  One of the objects is a signet ring, identifying the sergeant as the fourth son of…someone.  I don’t remember.  I’m sure Jim will remind me in the notes.

Speaking of Oshwin, when we check him and the mystery arrow out, which, incidentally, is still sticking out of him, we see that it’s causing his veins to turn black.  Creepy.  And ew. 

Finally, a moment for pleasantries.  “Hi, Grugor!”  Natalia says.

He waves.  “Hi, Natalia!”

Okay, moment over.  “Do you know where this arrow came from?” Iema asks.

“No,” Grugor says, “but I see dem before.  Never archer, though.”

We see no signs of the mysteriously helpful killer about, but we decide not to waste time looking, either.  The treehouse is going to have to wait.  Natalia turns into a horse, carrying Iema and the dead Corin back to town.  Grugor rids Beta.  At first, Beta looks grumpy about it, but Grugor whispers something to him, and suddenly, Beta goes racing off.  Later, Grugor will explain to Natalia that orcs are good with wolves or something to that extent.

Hm.  Wonder if Natalia should be jealous, ha.  The newly-awakened Beta seems to have taken more quickly to Grugor than Natalia, in some ways.

Instead of going to Devies, this time, we head to Stilldale, where we know Roan is.  We get there with no problems.  When we do get there and find her, she sees Corin, and the presses upon us the dangers of bringing kids on our adventures.

Iema is almost apologetic.  “I know,” he says.  “But the boy insists on coming with us.  It’s what he wants.”

“Besides,” Natlaia adds, “he’s at the age where he can decide for himself.”  Note, by the way, the SPRING does not believe that thirteen year olds can decide SQUAT for themselves.  But Jim had once explained to me that thirteen was considered an adult where Corin is from; therefore, Natalia feels it’s perfectly within reason to treat Corin as such.

Roan resurrects Corin.  He gets up, confused.  Then he walks around stiffly.

“Oh, no,” I groan, “Corin’s a zombie!”

Thankfully, I’m just stupid: After rolling on the Shit Gone Bad table, Corin just gets -2 to initiative.  Way better than a zombie.

While Corin is trying to unstiffen himself (not an uncommon dilemma for a 13 year old boy, I’m told, haha), Roan tells us that Stilldale hasn’t had any vistors recently.  We tell her the sitaution in the woods, how we were attacked by the forest giant on behalf of the Spruce Circle, and how we were ambushed while trying to get to my treehouse.  Suddenly, it makes sense to Roan why Stilldale hasn’t had visitors.  Personally, I’m starting to think it’s better if it doesn’t.

And here concludes the 17th game of “Homebrewed,” rushed, yes, but hey, I’m DONE WITH THE PUMPIN’.  Another dilemma Corin could relate to, I’m sure.

Welcome back to the 15th installment of “Homebrewed,” an on-going series documenting the D&D game that my super-sexy DM (and boyfriend) Jim is running for Phil and me.  Currently, our characters are at the mage fair in the world of Valt, mostly doing the meet-and-greet thing.  Yeah, still.  Natalia is starting to miss her tree house.  However, we have a nasty (and intriguing) surprise encounter at the end of the game.  If you need to catch up on the last “Homebrewed,” catch it here.  Otherwise, read on.

Briezen the 3^rd

You know, I’ve come to realize that I envy my druid’s life.  Well, except for the dying part.  And the part where my beloved pet transforms into a centaur, gallops into the sunset, dumping my other beloved pet and leaving me to pick up the pieces.  That part is not so fun.  However, the part where Natalia starts off her morning waking up in Uliver’s freakin’ PORTABLE MANSION and at a kickass mage fair, to boot…well, it just makes it that much harder to trudge off to work on Mondays to quote benefits and adjust insurance claims, ya know?

But, alas, it is not Monday morning, it’s Friday night, and right now, we’re Iema and Natalia waking up in a portable mansion.  We get up, and Iema, whose memory is infinitely better than mine, immediately tries to find Raelan to find out when his presentations are.  (Meanwhile, I’m all like, “Oh, yeah, Raelan is the whole reason why Natalia’s here.”)  Raelan has already left for the day, so Iema pumps the information out of Uliver, who tells us that Raelan has three presentations at the 7th, 11th, and 2nd bells.  I’m confused exactly how time works until Jim tells me out of character that it’s just 7 AM, 11 AM, and 2 PM. 

Oh.  Somehow, I thought it would be something more original than that.

It’s just after the 7th bell, so Iema and Natalia hurry off to the ampitheater, where Raelan’s presentation is already underway.  We settle down.  The subject Raelan is presenting is very…wizardly.  Iema seems to be catching most of it. Natalia is mostly just dozing in the bleachers, as I imagine she would have done in high school.  The topic is ley lines.  More specifically, ley lines within the body and how intersecting ley lines create sockets.  Raelan talks about how his now deceased master had discovered new ley lines in the ears.  This is all apparently good stuff because it means good things for gear.

There is quiet applause when Raelan finishes.  Everyone gets up, mills around.  We find Uliver there.  Uliver goes over the presentation with us, explaining that the discovery wasn’t a total surprise–it’s something that the community had known was coming, but Raelan’s late mentor is the one who beat everyone to the punch.  He adds that most apprentices would also take credit for their late master’s discoveries, whereas Raelan gave full credit to his.

As we’re getting up to head out, Iema and Natalia decide the best use of our time would be to find out more about Chenestes.  I don’t even know where to start.  Uliver points out it’s a mage fair, full of magic-users–everyone here probably knows something about Chenestes.   The question, really, is where to start.

We decide to start out with the Guild of Scholars, a group of sages, to see what they know about Chenestes.  Before we go, Natalia tells Iema he should probably do the talking.  This wasn’t my way to get Phil do all the heavy-lifting, by the way.  Some wizards aren’t fans of druids, and in Valt, almost nobody is a fan of any of us nature-folk.  Bards, though?  LOVED.  All because they do the pretty songs and stuff.  I feel like Velma to Phil’s Daphne.  Regardless, if we’re gonna be pumping for information, it should be the bard doing it.

Speaking of the beauty and beast syndrome, we see a similiar pair at a tent behind a booth.  Jim describes a man that everyone is gathered around.  He’s very pretty-boy sounding, from the white gold-trimmed armor to the long locks that, Jim says, are ”fluttering in the breeze that may or may not actually be there.”  He sounds like Fabio.  Unsurprisingly, he’s a paladin.  Not far away, though, is a woman who is being ignored.  We make a bee-line for the woman.

The woman, whose name is Shariel, agrees with us to trade information for information.  She gives us some background:  Chenestes was a mage kingdom that existed before the Godstorms, a city where all branches of magic were considered to be equal.  Nobody’s been able to detemine its location, but there’s circumstantial evidance that it was everywhere.  This is because they had portals everywhere that all linked to Chenestes.  They also had many portals that opened into different planes, often in temples.

Out of character, Jim says to me, “Sound familiar, Spring?” 

Yes, yes, it does.  The one to the astral plane, the other to the fire plane.  The portals with the funny writing, the funny glow, at least one located in a temple–and that portal, thankfully, hidden by Raelan with tree brush.

Jim-as-Shariel continues with the background.  After the outbreak of the Godstorms, Shariel explains, communications broke down between many cities.  Bards were helpful filling in that role; hence, why bards are so loved in Valt.  However, the connection to Chenestes was lost, and only some written records survived the Godstorms partially.  No digs have turned up any Chenestik archeology.  Still, everyknow “knows” that Chenestes existed.  They also know it had contact with an emperor of Numbrar, but there have been four different emperors by that name.

Now, it’s our turn.  Shariel grills us about news on Derrikol.  I find it especially odd that she asks Natalia whether or not there is any Numbraran nobles in either Stilldale or Devies.  Natalia admits that Julium is in Stilldale. 

Shariel gives Natalia a stern look.  “Julium Caesus Numbra?”

I’m not surprised she knows his name.  Doesn’t everyone?  “Um…yeah,” Natalia says.

She nods.  “He led an attack on Numbrar,” she says.  “He’s wanted.” 

Something to note:  Central and Upper Numbrar both consider themselves the main “Numbrar.”  But the woman is actually from Upper Numbrar.  Wisely, Natalia doesn’t go into details about her friendship with Julium.  At first, she frets a bit about revealing Julium’s location if he’s wanted, but let’s face it–if they didn’t know already, they would find out, anyway.  Julium’s plans to take over and unite an empire aren’t going to exactly make him unnoticed.

The woman’s knowledge about Derrikol is sketchy.  She knows that the forest is between civilization and something very evil.  That makes sense–Natalia remembers Gudger (remember the foul-talking ranger with the crocodile named Boots?) telling her scary things were being run into the forest by even scarier things in the Wasted Lands.  Natalia tells Shariel about the dread guards, the undead constructs with Chenestik writing in their armor, being in the forest.  Turns out they’ve been found in other areas as well. 

Somehow, in all the twisting conversation, Shariel has managed to get Natalia to admit to at least one portal that has been since destroyed (the astral one).  Natalia also admits to killing a gnome wizard who was pulling things out from the fire plane, but she stops short of telling her anything about the portal or its location.  She figures Raelan hid it for a reason, and quite frankly, while Shariel seems nice enough, Natalia doesn’t fully trust her yet.  Still, Shariel can tell Natalia isn’t telling her the full story.  Finally, Natalia refers Shariel to Raelan for more information.  Raelan is better at handling this stuff.

Eventually, the conversation turns to politics, who is at war with whom.  Iema and Shariel talk while Natalia tunes this stuff out.  I simply cannot roleplay Natalia as being interested in politics when I have zero interest in it myself.

Finally, it’s half past the 10th bell, so Iema and Natalia say goodbye to Shariel to go see Raelan’s second presentation.  This is the presentation that Raelan had asked Natalia for her help on.  He meets us outside.

“Natalia, I need you to prep any direct energy attacks you have,” Raelan says.  He turns to Iema.  “Hey, you don’t have direct energy attacks, do you, man?”

It turns out that while Iema can play a mean fiddle, he cannot CALL LIGHTNING, FOO’!  Which, incidentally, this foo’ preps, along with Produce Flame, at my tiny dragon skull clasp’s prompting.  Iema resigns himself to a seat, getting ready to enjoy an original Wizard of Vengeance production.

And the production, admittedly, is pretty cool.  Raelan presents his invention, the guantlet of reflection.  It just looks like a glove to me.  He goes into the construction of it, what it’s made of, yadda, yadda, yadda, and finally, the good part–Natalia gets to hurl flames at him.

At his go, Natalia does Produce Flame and throws fire at him, which he neatly catches in the gloved hand with no harm done to him.  He explains how it works to the audience.  (This part, I don’t remember too well; I think depending on the time you keep the spell in your hand, you can either have it dissipate or you can redirect it entirely.)  Then the big spell: Call Lightning–which he catches again in his hand with no harm done to him.

His presentation gets a pretty good response.  After it’s over, everyone gets up and does the chatting together thing, much like after any other performance.  Raelan comes over to us, we tell him about Shariel, and he suggests that we seek out someone named Harsam.  Raelan had sent Harsam one of the Chenestik coins under the pseudonym of Wyrmling.

Iema and Natalia agree to go do that–after we catch a Scramble game.  We do that, it’s all fun–Corin was impressed by the Jade Islander team–and then we head back for Raelan’s third and biggest presentation yet.

If you’re getting the impression that it’s all about Raelan right about now, I’m inclined to agree.  But it’s a mage fair, so it seems to make sense.  It’s also cool to see what Raelan’s been doing in his spare time.  Because he’s always doing something in his spare time.

Raelan appears on stage.  Everyone sits down.  “Today, I’m going to present a new spell,” Raelan tells the audience.  “But first, I would like to ask you this: How many of you were brought into this profession by means of the Children’s Auction?”

Hands go up.  Quite a few, actually.  That seems to be a popular way to gain entry as a wizard’s apprentice.

“How many of you were brought there because you lost your parents, or your mother died in childbirth?”

More hands go up.  I guess pregnancy is dangerous for women in this time.  Remind Natalia to keep her legs crossed.

Iema leans over to Natalia.  “Hey,” he whispers, “did Raelan’s mother die giving birth to him?”  I had to ask Jim if Natalia knows anything about this because I certainly don’t remember this ever coming up.  Jim insists that it had and Natalia does know this information.

So Natalia says yes.  They continue listening to the presentation.

Raelan goes on about how horrible it is knowing that your birth is the one that killed your mother, and how he has come up with something to help circumvent this scenerio in the future.  I remember the scroll of Reincarnation that Raelan had asked from Natalia quite a while ago.  “Oh,” I start muttering to myself, “I know what this is.  I know what spell he’s presenting.”

 ”Thanks in part to Uliver, the Wizard of Portals,” Raelan is saying, “and Natalia the Stillwitch”–I cringe (DRUIDS AND WITCHES ARE NOT THE SAME THING, ARGH!)–”I present Vanoshi’s Timely Salvation spell.”

Two women in simple garb and cloaked with hoods to disguise their faces come out.  One is very obviously pregnant; the other is not.  Raelan explains that the pregnant woman wishes to terminate her pregnancy; the other woman is barren and wants a child.  They have agreed to the spell, which Jim describes in great, dramatic detail (and which I failed to take notes on and have forgotten the details since, so you suffer the consequence), and the pregnant woman’s belly shrinks while the other one grows.

For this presentation, Raelan gets a standing ovation.  After the presentation, the women go off their seperate ways.  Raelan is beaming, happy with his new spell and how it was received.  He decides it’s time to enjoy the mage fair–by hitting the nearest bar to meet some chicks.  Iema and Natalia follow suit, but in a different bar where we can hunt down one of the players from the Jade Islander Scramble team that Corin wants to meet.  We take the kids (yes, Natalia still has Nameless Girl with her–like Natalia, the little girl doesn’t talk much) to a bar. 

That’s how you know something is a work of fiction, by the way–you take kids in the bar, and the 12 year old orders the drinks.  (Well, it’s either fiction or somewhere that is not America.)  Corin at least did get fruit juice for the girl.  After they got a little food and drink in their system, Iema and Corin try playing a little fiddle for the crowd.  Phil doesn’t roll too well, though, and Jim’s assist as Corin is a 1, so the outcome is that Iema and Corin are laughed off the stage.

Finally, we go to see Harsam.  We find a guy dressed in a turban and with what sounds like a heavy, stereotypical Indian accent.  He has a hookah in front of him.  “Hullo!” he greets us in his too-thick accent.  He sweeps his arm up in a dramatic wave.  “And how can I help you?”

Iema says, “We came to see you.  We’re friends of Wyrmling.”

Harsam’s ears perk up.  “Wyrmling?” he repeats.  “Let me close the tent up so we can talk.”  And, not shocking to me as I detected BS with the accent, as soon as the tent’s closed, Harsam drops the fake-Indian accent.

“An act, huh?” Iema says, waving to all the props.  “And a hookah?”

Harsam looks at the hookah disdainfully.  “I don’t even smoke.”

And then we start our talking about Chenestik stuff.  Harsam says he knows of the Chenestik buildup in Derrikol Forest, and that Cadram is keeping the flow of information between guilds at a minimum.  There are three sites in the mountains.  He does know about the astral portal, but Natalia’s telling him of the fire portal is the first time he’s ever heard of it. 

“There are more that survived than I realized,” he says, scratching his chin.

We talk about more happenings the Derrikol region.  He describes the mountains as being “red with blood” because of an adventuring group going after giants there.  Natalia realizes that he’s referring to Reneat’s group.  Among other gossip, Harsam tells us that while we’ve been gone, there’s been some big action in our neck of the woods: Julium has attacked Devies and declared himself the rightful heir to central Numbrar.  Nobody is stupid, though.  We all know Julium isn’t going to stop with just central Numbrar, and that he’ll eventually turn his sights south.  And although Harsam is from Cadram, which has a holy war against Numbrar in general, their real problem is with Lower Numbrar, so yes, he’s rooting for Julium.  For now.

Meanwhile, Harsam suggests we go talk to the Wizard of Animals.  He thinks Natalia specifically will be interested in her philosophies regarding Chenestes.  We bid farewell to Harsam, he goes back to his fake hookah and turban, and we wander out to find the Wizard of Animals.

Iema graciously pays for our entrance fee once we get there.  We step into the portal and into the jungle again.  Elianra, the Wizard of Animals, quickly spots us and comes over to welcome us, remembeing that we had left an old gorilla in her care.

We don’t beat around the bush, telling her quickly that we had been advised to seek her out regarding her philosophy on Chenestes.  Elianra gets excited.  “Yes,” she says.  “See, I believe that the Chenestines believed that the world was not orginally evil.”  (Note: Not sure if I ever mentioned it, but the actual world of Valt is inclined toward evil, including nature, which is why townspeople tend not to like druids, rangers, or barbarians.)  “I believe they believed it was neutral.  Furthermore, I think the Chenestines knew what caused it–what made Valt evil.”

This does perk Natalia’s interest–and mine.  Often, I’ve mentioned to Jim that it didn’t make sense to me that nature was evil in this world.  Even if Natalia is neutral-good, she recognizes that nature is inherently neutral.  Well, it’s supposed to be.  And it’s often bugged me that this isn’t the case for Valt.

Elianra tells us that she believes that Chenestes had an idea how to reverse this.  The problem is that, in everything she’s read, it hinges on a word that nobody has been able to translate.  She thinks that’s it’s something that was so pervasive in the Chenestik world that, in their texts (what survived of it), nobody bothered to explain what ”it” was.  She suggests we investigate for the Tam-wu scrolls.  Tam-wu was a monestary located in Shoten and a sister-organization to Chenestes.  Their scrolls were being written during the actual fall of Chenestes.

Somehow, I think if it was that easy to find these scrolls, someone would have already done so by now.

Another alternative:  She’s been trying to get ahold of a dragon by the name of Lastromexanuissidy (pronounced LASS-tro-MEX-an-NOOSE-ity).  This dragon suffers from a form of insanity where he places an abnormal amount of value of things that are not necessarily valuable.  However, he does boast the biggest library in the world.  He will probably kill us if we approach him, though, unless we give him something that he considers valuable. 

And then she mentions that the Dragon Council is being held in her little jungle-realm.  Um.  Yeah.  We’re out of there fast.

So, now we go off to find that druid Althris we met before from the Palm Circle, the one that’s trying to help other druids out of Fasset.  It’s night time now, but we go to his booth because we know that he’s also camping there.

It’s dark, very dark.  Jim says we see green and orange lights ahead. 

“Uh oh,” Iema says.  He turns to Corin.  “Corin, you and the girl need to go.”  He casts some invisibility spell on Corin.  “Sorry, I only have enough for one,” Iema says.

The little girl is lifted into the air by an invisible Corin, hear his footsteps as he scurries off with the little girl to hide in some nearby bushes.

Iema and Natalia go to the campsite to investigate.  We hear a ripping sound, see purple light, and see a figure cloaked in a long, navy blue robes.

It turns around, spotting us.  It makes clicking-croaking sounds, and looks like it’s starting to cast some spells.  We roll spellcraft checks.  Between Natalia and Iema, we’ve determined he’s used blur (okay), haste (eh, not too bad)–and protection from good.

HMMM.  Yeah, we’re straight into combat.

Natalia turns into a bear.  Unfortunately, I have developed a really bad habit of never putting Greater Magic Fang on Beta, so when he attacks, he’s pretty lame right now.  (But give him a break.  He’s still heartbroken over Tango, after all.)  Iema, ever quick-thinking, casts haste on us, but then he has to do a reflex save against whatever The Thing is doing.  I guess he didn’t do too good because he feels himself choking.  Makes it very hard for a bard to do much, ya know.

The Thing also does something to reduce my strength.  Unfortunately for him, I’m a bear right now, so even weakened, I’m still all B.A.  The Thing then touches the ground, creating some illusion that changes what it looks like around us, making the scenery look hellish and frightening.  He also manages to dispel Iema’s Haste.  Beta attacks, crits, but despite that bout of luck, cannot manage to trip Thing.  Thing whirls around on Beta and blinds him.

Natalia thankfully has Wild Spell, which allows her to cast while shape-shifted.  Using this, she summons a dire lion.  It immediately jumps into the fray, getting a claw, bite, and rake into Thing.  There’s a LOT of scuffling going on, but finally, between Beta, Bear-Natalia, and the dire lion–with help of Iema’s songs–Jim says Bear-Natalia pops Thing’s head off “like a grape.”

Ew, I didn’t need the description.

We tear Thing apart.  For a moment, Beta and the dire lion look like they’re going to fight for pieces of Thing.  Jim reminds me that Beta has that need to bury the dead, so I dismiss the dire lion and let Beta do his thing.  Might as well–there’s no hope of identifying what this thing was with these itty-bitty pieces, anyway.

Iema searches for Althris.  He finally finds the druid’s boots with a little bit of legs.  Jim says there’s sorceror sand (?) around the area, a ton of it.  I don’t even know what that is, and I doubt Natalia would either.  The only thing I got from his explanation is that a lot of magic had been expended in this area.  And, also, there isn’t enough of Althris’s body left to reincarnate. 

I’m depressed by this.  There are only a handful of other druids I like, and Althris was one of them. 

Natalia changes back into human form and finds that she’s choking on something.  She pulls the object out of her mouth.  It’s a blue marble that Iema identifies as an ioun stone, but he’s not sure what it does.

We call the kids back.  Iema makes Corin visible again–and sees that he’s carrying a fancy, jewel-encrusted axe.

Iema looks at him in disbelief.  “Corin,” he says, “where did you get that axe?”

“Well,” Corin says, “you were in trouble.  And I was invisible, sooo…”

“We have to find the owner,” Iema says.  “We have to return it.”

“No need,” we hear someone behind us say.  We turn around to see a wizard standing nearby–the owner of the giant axe.  Who would have thought that wizards carried axes?  Luckily, the wizard isn’t too much of a douche about it, and he even identifies the ioun stone as being one that enhances wisdom for us.  He does say, though, that we’re lucky the kid didn’t use the axe–he has it rigged so it would strike anyone else using it with a bolt of lightning.

(This, if I recalled correctly, was filed under Iema’s lesson to Corin about “why we don’t steal things from powerful wizards.”  Corin’s gonna start peeing his pants when he meets a wizard, if these lessons keep up.)

Iema keeps searching the site.  Eventually, he manages to find two hands.  Correction: Two left hands. He realizes that Thing had anywhere from 4-8 hands.  The hands appear human.

Like this isn’t getting weirder by the minute.  The only things we find around the area are some pamphlets about Fasset.  We give up, head back to Uliver’s.

When we get there, Raelan is still gone.  “Where is he?” we ask Uliver.

Uliver frowns.  “He left with a woman named Shariel.  She says that you sent her to him?”

Iema, who didn’t seem as skittish as Natalia did about Shariel, suddenly grows concerned.  “You know,” he says, “she seemed nice, but I really want to check it out and make sure he’s okay.” 

We hurry out.  And we find Raelan.  And Shariel.  Dancing. 

Yeah, he’s fine.  We go home.  Behind us, we can hear Raelan, drunk, bragging, “…and then I told that dragon, TAKE THIS, and unloaded some Magic Missiles into him!”

This is where we called game.  Phil went home; Jim and I talked.  One thing that Jim said later, after the game, that bugs me:  “Spring, didn’t you notice that The Thing never actually attacked you?  It only used defensive type of spells.”

Uh oh.  Now I’m wondering what we did–what we killed.

Okay, brace yourself for a heifer of a “Homebrewed,” an ongoing series documenting the D&D game between Jim, myself—and now Phil!  Not only will this be a long post documenting mostly meet-and-greets, but I’m not sure how accurate it will be.  Phil and Jim roleplay so fast, that I know that I missed some stuff, so I’m hoping Jim or Phil will catch my mistakes and add them in the comments.  Be forewarned, there will probably be a lot of errors, since I’m putting this up with little to no editing, just for the sake of getting this up before the next game.  I’ll fix stuff later.  Forgot what happened in our last game?  You can refresh your memory on our teeny-tiny last game here.

First of all, I would like to tell you that you should feel loved.  I worked all day, talked to some nasty people, came home to nearly cause a fire in our apartment, spent 45 minutes on hold with Blizzard to reclaim my hacked Warcraft account while juggling cooking myself dinner, and am now scanning my laptop with Warcraft open, per Blizzard’s suggestion, to make sure there’s no keylogger software on it.  Apparently, some of keyloggers cannot be detected by anti-virus software unless Warcraft is actually open.

My point is that I’ve had one hell of day, yet I’m still making time in my crappy little day to write up another “Homebrewed.”  So feel loved.  Or hated.  Depends how you feel about these entries.

I’d say I care, but that’s a lie.  So let’s skip the politeness fluff and get to the meat, yes?

Bracell the 30^th

While Phil puts the finishing touches on his character sheet—and, by the way, he’s way faster than I am, but I guess that goes without saying—Jim and I get started with Natalia going to Raelan’s.  Raelan immediately says he’s got something for her.  Natalia and I are getting to where we love going to Raelan’s.  He always has good stuff for us.  Er, her.  Yeah.

She follows him downstairs.  There are five objects on a pedestal, covered by a black cloth.  Raelan takes out one of the objects and hands it to her.  It’s a tiny dragon skull cloak clasp.  Raelan explains he’s made one for everyone in our regular party.  Which, sadly, doesn’t include Phil yet, as his character hasn’t been “introduced” yet.  Too bad.  The clasp is cool.  It’ll allow us to sent messages up to 25 words once a day, and it will “suggest” spells that we should take when preparing our spell list.

Which is a nice, in-game way of letting the DM look at your spell list and make suggestions, based on what he knows is going to happen in the game.  Sweet.  Because I always seem to pick the wrong stuff.

But WOOT.  Right now, we’re heading to the mage fair.  On our way there, Raelan and Natalia barely get out of town when a cut ogre steps out from behind a boulder.  There’s no sizing each other up here.  The bastard just charges.

Raelan immediately says, “Oh, shit,” and casts a spell on himself.  The ogre zeroes in on Natalia, though.  He manages to jump over her shield and stab her. 

Before the game, Phil had mentioned how turning into a bear would be cool, and since I always like to experiment with different forms and spells, I decided to try it out to see what it could do.  So Natalia transforms.  Destination: BROWN BEAR.  EAT ME, OGRE MOFO.

Oh, except that just transforming pretty much took my turn.  Well, you can eat me later.

Meanwhile, Beta and Tango attack, but the ogre shakes them off.  It’s becoming painfully obvious to me that Beta and Tango just aren’t doing what they used to do.  Meanwhile, Raelan runs up to the ogre and does something to it.  Don’t ask me what.  I’ve no clue.  Jim says that Natalia’s not sure, but she sees some spray of acid and something else shooting from the ogre.  Raelan did something painful, that’s for sure, but the ogre also hurt him right back.  Leave it to a pissed ogre to do that.

Finally, I get to attack as a bear, and between what Raelan did and Natalia’s super-awesome bearness, we bring the ogre down.  After the fight, we have serious healing to do.  Already.  This doesn’t bode well.  The loot is nice, though: 900 gold, suit of magical spiked plate mail, a potion, a magical ring, and a magical dagger.

We keep on truckin’.  After a couple of encounter rolls, I hit one.  Jim says I hear laughing.

I wish I could describe the laughing.  When Jim imitates it, I always know what kind of monster is ahead.  They go ooooo-huh-huh-huh-huh.  Try it.  Do it out loud.  Make sure you sound retarded.  Then you got it down.

“Damn it, they’re hill giants, aren’t they?” I groaned.

Close.  “Stone giants,” Jim says.  Apparently, being retarded runs in the family.  Maybe the two giants are inbred cousins.

“Can’t we just pretend we don’t see them and go the other way?”

“Fine,” Jim says cheerfully.  He turns to Phil.  “Phil, your character is eaten by stone giants and dies.”

“Oh, no!” Phil laughs.

“Fine, fine, fine,” I grumble.  “Natalia will go check it out.”

We get closer.  We see two stone giants (naturally).  I don’t know what Jim says they were doing or why they were laughing, but I think it’s safe to assume that they were being retarded.  And, also, not kosher: Behind them is an iron pot with a man (Phil’s character)—a bard, by the looks of it, and an arcling to boot—lying unconscious in it, with a fire going on underneath it.  Pretty clear what the giants’ plans are.

Attack!  Natalia turns into a bear again.  I’m not sure why I even bother going back to being human except to talk and make rude comments.  Beta and Tango try attacking the giants and miss.  The giants attack Raelan, he loses something like half his hit points in damage, and he throws a fire spell.  Between the spells and blasts going around, fire hits the cauldron and wakes the man up.  The man scrambles out of the pot, muttering hot, hot, hot.  When he gets out, he starts to heal himself.

Jim has Phil describe his character now, so we have an idea what he looks like.  Luckily for Phil, the ogres weren’t very thorough in their cooking preparation—he still has his clothes on.   And I wish I could tell you what he was wearing, but I don’t remember.  I think there was a hat involved.  And he looks Asian and is decent-looking.  Not that Natalia cares, mind you–Natalia is kind of dumb about noticing men.

(Just a note:  This has even been discussed once, long ago.  Jim once asked me how I would feel about romance between Natalia and any of the other characters, and I said no way.  I find it a little weird and I wouldn’t feel comfortable role-playing it.  Besides, Natalia just doesn’t strike me as the type to be interested in, well…anyone.  She was going to be a nun once, remember?)

Back to the story:  More scuffling ensues.  Even in my bear form, which temporarily increases my hit points, I’m getting low.  Seeing us struggle, the bard then starts reciting a poem about speed and grace, casting a haste spell on Natalia.

Sweet.

Even so, this is where it gets ugly.  My poor wolves, I’m afraid, are starting to get in over their heads compared to the uglies Natalia has been fighting lately.  Beta survives, but Tango is killed in the battle.  I’m not as concerned when Tango dies, though, as I was with Beta.  After all, I’ve reincarnated one wolf before with little consequence (save his need to bury the dead), and I actually had Reincarnation on my spell list.  I’d just reincarnate Tango, right?

Right?  Hmmm…

Raelan decides to use the giants’ stupidity against them.  Or maybe it’s not stupidity but just boy-humor.  Because he whistles at them, gets their attention—and then farts.

They start laughing.  And laughing.  They can’t stop.

Natalia jumps in.  Thanks to the bard’s haste spell, she manages to get a bite in and kill the giant.   The bard approaches us and introduces himself as Iema.  He was taking a short cut to the mage fair, he explains, but he got caught in a trap.  Next thing he knew, he was waking up, cooking in a pot, and seeing us fight not too far away.

At least he had his clothes on.

Natalia starts healing everyone up again.  Iema looks around for loot.  He checks out a nearby cave.  “Uh, guys?  There’s a ton of gold in here,” he calls out.

Sounds good.  Natalia and I, though, are focused on trying to reincarnate Tango.  “She could turn into something else besides a wolf,” Natalia tells Raelan.

Raelan says, “No worries, I can polymorph her back.”

“All right,” Natalia says, and she casts Reincarnation.

I roll to see what Tango will come back with.  Jim looks at the table in his book.  He doesn’t say anything for a minute.  Then he turns to me.  “You see Tango’s body start to change.  Her trunk stretches out, her face shrinks in.  Her paws turn into hooves and she grows a horse tail.  She’s a centaur.  She looks at you and says, ‘Hello.’”

“Hello?”

“Thank you for resurrecting me,” Jim/Tango says. 

“Sure thing.  Wanna be a wolf again?”  I’m ready to go back to the way things were.

“No,” she says.

Huh?  No?  This, I hadn’t been expecting, so I just repeated her stupidly.  “No?  What do you mean?”

Tango says, “I want to stay a centaur.  I can think now.  I like being able to think.”

“But what about Beta?” I ask.

Tango casts a sidelong glace at him and shrugs.  “He’s a wolf.  He’ll get over it.”

It’s almost painful to see how dismissive she is toward Beta now.  Poor Beta.  Poor me.  It was nice running with Tango, but I can’t change her back if she doesn’t want to be changed.  That would be cruel.  “Well, if you want to stay a centaur, I can’t argue.  Do you…need anything?”  Natalia asks.  “Money?  Anything?”

She wants a weapon, she says.  She grabs one of the giant’s clubs, stating that it will do.  She also wants to be with others like herself.  Luckily, Iema knows where some centaurs are located, knows that they are semi-welcoming of newcomers.  He points her to the right direction.

And then she’s gone.

“Sorry about your wolf,” Iema says.

What a way to start off meeting someone.

We keep on going, Raelan, Iema, me, and my one lonely-looking Beta.  We get another encounter.  Jim says that where we’re going, the road is getting rockier.  An orc dressed in rags steps out and demands money.  Iema wants to bluff and give him a little bit, claiming that’s all we have on us, but I just flat-out refuse.  I’m not in the mood to negotiate with assholes.

It’s not too tough to kill the orc.  Know what was tough to kill?  His gray render that had apparently been hiding out.  It launches out at Beta, who was the one who dealt the killing blow to the orc, and kills Beta swiftly.  Then the gray render picks up the orc’s body and lumbers off.  Once he had killed the one that had killed his orc, he was done.  He wasn’t after us.

Remind me to find a way to get a gray render.  They’re nasty enemies but would be great to have on your side.

Night is falling and I don’t have any more Reincarnations.  I’ll have to wait until morning.  Now, I’m starting to see the drawbacks to Reincarnation.  Now, I’m not so eager to use it.

Briezen the 1^st

During the night between Bracell the 30th and Briezen the 1st, Iema and Natalia take turns keeping watch.  The last couple rolls is Phil’s, though, so it’s on his watch when we get an encounter.  But it’s not so bad.  In fact, it proves…interesting.

Iema is sitting by the fire, plucking at his mandolin softly so as not to wake Raelan and Natalia up, when he sees two people walking in our general direction.  It’s a man and a woman.  They’re dressed in typical Nubraran servant and elite garb, respectively.  The woman waves at Iema.

Phil roleplays Iema much friendlier than I roleplay Natalia.  Natalia would be ready to bite that woman’s hand off.  Iema, however, waves back.  No wonder why everyone likes him better.

(Jim also says in Valt, the world we’re in, druids are generally disliked and bards are revered.  So we make an interesting pairing.)

The couples come over.  Iema offers them food, a seat.  They decline, ask what’s new.  Iema tells them we’re heading to the mage fair.  The woman introduces herself as Harat, and, being a bard, Iema knows a little bit about a lot of things–including that name.  Although the significance of it is as lost to Spring-the-player as it would be to Natalia-the-druid.

Harat and the man start gossiping with the bard, which, I’m coming to learn, bards love best, after performing.  Or maybe that’s just Iema; he is, after all, the first bard I’ve ever heard of.  Unless you want to count that bardic Azer with the horn.  I do not.

But I digress.  If Natalia was awake, she would probably be concerned about the gossip:  Apparently, the couple tells Iema, a wizard in the Numbraran capital was tried for treason.  The wizard, desperate to find anything to help him get out of his sentence, admits knowing someone who knows and is concealing the true location of Chenestes.  The wizard had received a Chenestik coin from an unknown wizard, but when they tortured the wizard, he couldn’t tell him who the other wizard was who had sent him the coin.  The sender had sent the coin under his now deceased master’s name.

Sound familiar?  (Hint:  Julium and Natalia had found the coins and brought them to Raelan.)

Phil knows all this, but his character doesn’t.  “Oh, really?” Iema asks, interested.  He tries to get as much information out of them as he can before they leave.  Before they go, he points them in the right direction.  Apparently, Iema is a walking roadmap.

We wake up.  Iema tells us about the company and the gossip.  Raelan, understandably, freaks out.  He makes sure that Iema didn’t get an impression that either one of them were druids.

Iema frowns.  “I didn’t get the druid vibe from them.  For one, they were nicely dressed.  No offense,” he quickly adds, remembering Natalia.

“None taken,” she says.  Total offense taken.  Die, Bard!  (Kidding, Phil.)

Iema turns back to Raelan.  “Why?”

And Raelan confesses that he’s the one who had sent the coins.  He wants to make sure that neither one of the couple are druids since druids are the only ones who can find his place. 

I can’t imagine why anyone would torture anyone just to find Chenestes, but my interest in it is short-lived.  My priority at the moment is Beta.  I get my spells ready.  Jim says the dragon skull clasp is trying to change one of my spells (I forget which) into Speak with Animals.  I realize the wisdom in this and take the clasp’s advice.  And then we’re ready.  Natalia casts Reincarnation on Beta and hopes for the best.

He comes back as a leopard.  She casts Speak with Animal.

“Beta,” she says, “do you want to be a leopard?  Or do you want to be a wolf again?”

“Wolf,” he says.

“Okay,” Natalia says, relieved.  She pauses, reluctant to give up the ability to speak with Beta.  How often does she get to talk to her wolf, to make sure he’s happy?  “Beta…is there anything else you need?  Anything else you want?”

Beta looks straight at Natalia.  “Tango,” he says somberly.

AWWWW.  Natalia can’t do a damn thing about that!  She tries feebly to explain that Tango wanted to leave, but Beta looks forlorn.  Finally, she asks Raelan to turn Beta back to a wolf.  She can’t listen to him anymore.  She feels bad enough as it is.

We need to keep moving if we’re ever going to get to the mage fair.  Then he does something interesting: Raelan summons phantom steeds.  I’ve never heard of such a thing, but it must be cool because Phil/Iema seemed excited.  Then Jim realizes that Beta won’t be able to keep up with the steeds, so he has Raelan temporarily change Beta into a rat, so Natalia can scoop him up and put her in her pocket.

We ride a ways.  We’re getting to areas that Natalia has never been in.  Jim says that we come over a hill and see ahead of us a flat area with a huge city.  The river empties out into an ocean.  “That’s Derrikol,” Raelan says.  “Now that is a city.”

A little ways ahead, we start seeing signs of the mage fair.  A shrub nearby us sprouts into a human man.  “Okay,” he says.  “Let’s see it.”

Natalia shoots Iema a quizzical look, and Iema quietly explains that they have to show proof that they’re users of arcane magic in order to enter the fair.  Which, of course, makes Natalia a little nervous, since she is not an arcane magic user.

Raelan goes first.  He spins his wand around (show-off), slams it into the ground, and a sigil forms on the ground.  It sounds very Sailor Moonish to me.  You know, like in her transformation scenes?  All he’s missing is the tiara and the too-short skirts.

The shrub guy looks bored.  He turns to Iema.  “And you?”

I forgot to mention that Iema’s arcling “trait,” by the way, is that his eyes change color to match his mood.  In this case, though, he makes his ears change color.  I thought that was funny.

The man’s attention turns to Natalia.  “And you?”

Before Natalia can say anything–which is good because Natalia never seems to say the right thing–Iema quickly claims her as his guest.  Shrub guy lets us past.  Iema explains to Natalia that they’re allowed to bring one guest, and since he’s a bard and in good standing with most people, he figured it would be better for him to claim Natalia as his guest than Raelan.

We go past the entrance, and Raelan transforms Beta back to his wolf-self.  Next, Raelan tells Iema and Natalia that he has a secret meeting with people that would not feel comfortable with druids, so Iema offers to show Natalia around, since she’s never been to a mage fair before.  Before we all part, however, Raelan asks us to deliver some sacks via Natalia’s portable hole to some Grimlocks.  He emphasizes that he doesn’t want anyone to see us with these sacks.

Ummm…okay?

We go separate ways.  Natalia and Iema push past people.  It’s overwhelming.   Jim says that we go past booths hocking everything that any magic-user would need: quills, inks, magical items, parts, etc.  Iema looks for a booth that everyone else is shying away from.  Finally, he sees what he’s looking for:  A booth with a tent to keep it dark.  We go instead.  Iema casts light on a piece of copper and goes toward the Grimlock instead.

I’m surprised what this blind guy can make out.  We give him Raelan’s sacks.  He pulls out various items:  Dragon bits, ribs from the medela, a Chenestik coin.  He knows what all the items are and seems pleased.  Then he looks up, sniffing.  “I smell a druid in here.”

Yeah, like that’s not creepy.  “Yeah…sorry about that,” I say.  “No deodorant and all.”

We hurry out and go looking for another animal companion for Natalia.  We find a man selling exotic animals, including a gorilla.  Jim has me roll an animal empathy check; he says Natalia knows that the gorilla is old.  I’m not sure about buying him until Phil repeats something Jim/the vendor said that I didn’t catch: If the man doesn’t sell the gorilla, he’s going to sell him for parts.

Well, that cleared that up.  Iema helps Natalia haggle the price–good thing he’s there, as both Natalia and I are horrible at price-haggling–I buy the gorilla, cast Animal Friendship, and now have an old gorilla, along with Beta. 

Not that anyone here thinks this is odd, as most of them do have funny animals with them.

Iema tries giving Natalia more pointers while at the fair.  For one, show respect to anyone with a staff.  They’ve earned that staff, he says, and they can be a bit sensitive about anyone not showing them the proper respect.

Leave it to men to get all sensitive about their staves.

Suddenly, someone booms, “Maybe she should not be here at all!”

At first, Natalia thinks it’s someone else who doesn’t like druids.  She’s getting used to that.  Turns out it’s just someone with a sense of humor.  That, she’s not so used to.

The joker’s name is Atraxis, another arcling with blue skin, and he and Iema immediately start gossiping.  Most of this goes in one ear and out the other with Natalia, who isn’t interested much in gossip.  She catches that he’s the Wizard of Lightning and sells him her Creeping Cold scroll, but she ignores most of the gossip.  This is more Iema’s element than hers.

Her ears perk up, though, when she hears Atraxis say that he has heard that there’s a secret Dragon Council meeting going on there as well.  Natalia remembers meeting the green dragon, Vaectorfinyairuxo.  He’s on the Dragon Council.  Natalia has the urge to run away.

“If they’re here, then I don’t want to be,” Natalia says.  She explains that she has met Vector before and wants to be nowhere near him.

She’s assured that she doesn’t have to worry right now.  Iema is getting crazy-curious about the Dragon Council meeting, his excitement reflected by his eyes changing to a bright, bright green.  That is until Atraxis mentions that Allitillisinuros will be there as well.  Then Iema thinks twice.  Allitillisinuros is a great gold wyrm dragon who takes lawful good to some nasty extremes.  He’ll eat you just for telling a little, white lie.

So, yeah, Iema decides against trying to get near the Dragon Council.  Good call.

We say goodbye to Atraxis and go east where we see people thowing fireballs into an ocean.  Iema explains the competition to Natalia, admitting it’s basically a wizard’s version of competing to see who has the biggest dick.  Except, of course, female wizards are in on the games, as well. 

We find a cleric named Ressin selling wands nearby.  Natalia can’t afford the cooler healing wands and has to settle for another wand of Cure Moderate Wounds.  Better than nothing. 

We move on from that book to go watch a wizard named Axilard, the Wizard of Summoning, summon various creatures.  After that, Iema decides he wants a drink, so we head to the bazaar.  There are doors that seemingly go nowhere with no signs indicating which one goes where.  Iema picks one at random.  He picks a good one:  We find ourselves amongst tables and trees on a freakin’ BEACH.  The serving staff is busy, serving plenty of humans and half-ogres.  Jim says they even have tables and chairs for the larger-sized races.  How very equal opportunity of them.

Iema orders a Cliff Crawler and tries to figure out the music that’s playing.  He eventually gets interested in the people taking bets on various types of sports and gets a half-orc to explain Break Ball, Scramble, and Skiffing to him.  As thanks, Iema buys him a Skull Crusher. 

Eventually, Iema is all drunk out.    Natalia has decided she wants to see if Ressin (the cleric with the wands) would be interested in buying any of her scrolls, so we head back to his booth.  She sells him a scroll of Remedy Moderate Wounds, but he suggests that she try setting up a booth there to sell her other stuff.  So Iema and Natalia head over to the admin tent to pay for space.

This is starting to sound eerily like real life.  I don’t like it.

Except, of course, real life doesn’t include any sponsors being wizards.  We’re instructed to talk to the head administrator, Lassiter.  Forms are filled out (again, too much like the real world here), we sit, and some guy named Jovos appears.  Jovos suggests Natalia meet with Althris, another druid at the fair, and swap spells with him while she’s there.  Iema eagerly gossips with Jovos about the deaths rumored to have taken place so far at the mage fair.

Jovos seems…I don’t know how to explain it.  Serious?  He says that the deaths are regrettable, that he’s strongly suggested that the masters of the servants who have been killed foot the bill of resurrecting them, and given the weight of his own words, he thinks that they will abide.

Kinda gives you the impression that he’s someone that other wizards don’t screw with, right?  Well, maybe for good reason:  When Natalia and Iema finally leave the admin tent, Iema goes, “I know who that was!  I know who that was!”

“Who?”  asks Natalia.

Apparently, an arch-devil.  Ah…ha.  Yeah, bard, how about moving a little faster away from this freakin’ tent?

Rushing out, we bump into who else but Uliver!  He hugs Natalia, she introduces him and Iema.  We tell him we’re off to find the other druid attending this fair; he points the way to his tent and invites us over after we’re done.  We say goodbye and continue on our merry little way.  Jim describes the scenery as getting more and more wooded.  It’s also what Jim says is the shitty area of the fair, for the vendors they don’t care as much about.  I don’t know.  More wooded sounds nicer to me, but there is a reason why I’m playing a druid, ya know.

Here, Natalia meets Althris.  She’s very hesitant when she meets him, considering how nasty the other druids she’s met are.

“Let me guess,” Althris says.  “You’re from the Spruce Circle.”

“Yeah,” she says apologetically.  “Sorry.  I just joined.  They’re a bunch of dicks.  How did you know I was part of the Spruce Circle?”

“Because you acted as if you were expecting me to be a dick, too,” he says.  “I’m from the Palm Circle.” 

We learn a little more about Althris.  He’s a long way from home, for one, and his circle fled the city of Fasset when they realized the Scaled Emperor there wanted to use them.  My knowledge about Fasset is sketchy at best, although Jim has gone through great lengths to tell me about it.  I just don’t have a brain that retains political-type stuff.  I know that some really bad guy is ruling it, that it’s damn near impossible to take it over, and that Jim has run other games in Valt where Fasset was pretty central.  I’m hoping he’ll explain more in the comments.

Anyway, some druids are stranded in Fasset.  Althris and other members of the Palm Circle go from mage fair to mage fair, selling their scrolls, trying to raise funds to 1) rescue the stranded druids, and 2) drive the Scaled Emperor out of Fasset.  They welcome and will work with anyone who will aid them in their fight.

Natalia’s scalp feels prickly.  She knows something.  She knows– “Julium,” she says aloud.

“Julium?  You know Julium?” Iema says.  He seems impressed.  After all, Julium is some noble big wig in Valt.

“Yeah, I met him staring at a bunch of ants in a cave,” she says.  She turns to Althris.  “I think…I think he plans on eventually going after Fasset.  He’d be good to work with.  I’ll tell him about you.  Um…how would I get ahold of you if he’s interested?”

“I’ll be travelling with this mage fair,” Althris tells her.  “We’ll be going southwest and then to Cadram.” 

Natalia makes a mental note.  Please, please, she thinks, don’t forget this.  Because we all know how bad Natalia and I are about forgetting EVERYTHING.

Althris and Natalia trade spells, her Infestation of Maggots and Handfire for his Blinding Spittle and Healing Sting, and eventually say goodbye.  I’ll have to remember him, one of the few druids that wasn’t a jerk.

Iema and Natalia head back to where we saw Uliver.  He finds us, ushers us back to his portable “door” that, again, seemingly goes nowhere.  But when he opens the door, it opens up into a mansion.  Raelan eventually shows up, everyone gets caught up with each on what we’ve seen and done during the day, the general concensus is that we don’t want to know what Jovos is doing there or is up to, and Raelan tells Natalia that Elianra, the Wizard of Animals will be coming up the next day.  WOOT.

And we call it a night.

Briezen the 2^nd

Iema and Natalia get up, head out, and set up a booth.  Natalia sells druidic scrolls while Iema plays nearby.  But it’s not for long: Jim says Natalia sells all of her scrolls in about three hours.  How awesome.  I really didn’t want to sit around a booth for the whole day.  Instead, Iema convinces Natalia to go check out a Break Ball game, which Jim describes in wonderful detail.

Not being very interested in sports, I failed to take notes on it.  Forgive me. 

Uliver had mentioned the night before something called a child auction.  It didn’t sound very pleasant to me.  Iema and I go check it out anyway.  Apparently, a child auction is where mages can pick up apprentices.  But if they sound a little bit like slave auctions, well…they kinda did to me too.  Especially since wizards are examining the children like they’re cattle or something.  Natalia finds it very disturbing.

Of course, some poor and homeless kids show up, hoping just to be able to go with someone.  Iema decides that he wants to take on an apprentice.  There’s a little girl, about five, that everyone keeps passing over.  She appears to be homeless and an orphan.  She comes up to Beta and starts stroking his fur.  She has no fear of him whatsoever, despite the fact that Beta is the size of a small pony.  The other little kids, however, stay far away from Beta.  They’re not completely dumb.

A wizard notices her petting Beta and approaches the little girl.  “Hm, no fear, eh?”

She doesn’t say anything.

“Can you count?”  he asks her.

“No,” she says. 

“Spell your name?  Anything?”

She seems uninterested in his questions but answers.  “No.”

The wizard glowers at her, then walks away.  “They really should quality screen these kids.”

Natalia snaps.  “You’re a DICK,” she calls out to his retreating back.

I see Phil/Iema cringing, since, you know, Natalia IS his guest.  Luckily, the Mighty Dick hasn’t heard her and keeps walking away.

Meanwhile, Iema has met a Jade Islander kid, about twelve, who really likes the fiddle and is interested in becoming a bard.  Jim roleplays this kid with some kind of Irish or Scottish accent.  Anyway Iema meets with his mother, who is extremely grateful and excited that Iema wants to take her son on as an apprentice.  Iema promises visits and gives her some money, having heard from the kid earlier that his dad was killed and they were broke.

People are starting to clear out from the children’s auction.  Now some very shady-looking people are there, and nobody is taking the little girl with them.  Jim’s very clear that Natalia is aware of this.

I give Jim a dirty look.  “You’re totally trying to saddle me with a kid, aren’t you, Jim?”  I ask.

He shrugs.  “You can do whatever you want.  Just know some pervy looking guys are closing in on that little girl.”

Needless to say, Natalia grabs at the little girl.  She warns the guys to get away–the girl is hers.  HMPH.

Great.  Now what do I do with this kid?

Iema goes off to buy the kid–his name is Corin–a fiddle.  We go to a shop that sells instruments.  The shop keeper is some fairy guy, half human and half grasshopper, from the looks of it.  Iema is particularly impressed with a magic banjolele made from a dragon’s vocal cords.  Jim says that Natalia actually does recognize this instrument: It’s Raelan’s handiwork, made from the dragon we had killed.

It’s entirely too expensive, though.  There’s some small talk (the shop keeper warning Natalia that Vueliss has been pissing fairies off by bossing them around, as if he owned them) and Iema gives a rousing performance on the banjolele.

His performance, it seems, has gotten the attention of someone rather interesting.  We had heard about him in passing, but then we finally meet him:  Elrich, the Lich Bard.  OOOO, scary.  My understanding is that in order to become a lich, you have to be one evil motherfucker.

Natalia shrinks back.  If Iema is nervous, he doesn’t show it.

Elrich suggests that they have a little competition.  “All right,” Iema agrees.  “If I win, I would love that banjolele.  And you?”

“Hmm,” Elrich taps his fingers together.  “Tell me…you’re not doing anything with your soul, are you?”

“Uh, that might be a little too steep,” Iema says.

Elrich points at Corin.  “How about his soul?”

At this point, it’s hard for Phil to not laugh, but he gets the words out anyway:  “I don’t think so.  I promised his mother that I would take good care of him, and I don’t think losing her son’s soul in a bardic duel was exactly what she had in mind.”

The Lich Bard tries another route.  “How about later, I call on you for a favor?  Fine, fine, fine,” he says, sighing, rolling his eyes at Iema’s hesitance, “I’ll make sure it’s not something that would be against your morality or anything like that.”

Iema thinks about it for a little bit, then agrees.

So the duel starts.  They pull out chosen instruments and play.  Jim told us the different instruments and their significances.  I think one instrument was something that only monsters play, thus indicating that the Lich Bard had studied under monsters, but I can’t be for sure.  Unfortunately, I can’t remember which instruments they played, so if Jim (or Phil) wants to add it in the comments, feel free.  It was a pretty riveting part of the game, watching Iema trying to compete with this evil bad ass.

It looks like they’re about to tie on the third round, but loud applause rings out in favor of Iema, tipping the scales in his favor.  We look over.  The loud applause had come from a man–who had been kicked into action by Iema’s young, new apprentice, Corin.  Good kid there.

Iema wins the fourth round, so now they’re tied 2-2.  He and Elrich agree that acapella would be the tie breaker.  Iema feels a beneficial spell coming from an unknown source come over him.  He allows it to wash over him, but even with it, the Lich Bard wins.  Barely.

The two men bow to each other.  Iema is a gracious loser.  The Lich Bard again extends his offer to relieve Iema of his soul.  Iema politely declines, but says sure, he’ll keep it in mind.

Corin comes over.  “If you had played the fiddle, you would have won.”

Just like a twelve year old boy.  They all think they know everything.  But Iema just says, “Perhaps.”

We leave there, go to the Bazaar to find Elianra.  We pay 40 gold for the entrance fee, step through the hoop, and find ourselves in the jungle.  The little girl (who, by the way, has no name) seems to enjoy it here.  She really likes animals.  I wonder how hard it would be to train a kid to be a druid. 

Ahead, we see where the trees grow into the shape of a cabin.  We head to it and step inside.  There, we meet a woman in a green and white dress.   She introduces herself as Elianra, the Wizard of Animals.  How she came about the name, by the way, was that there was already a Wizard of Animals, but he treated the animals badly, using them for his own needs.  She fought him and killed him, winning his title.  The only fight, she points out, she has ever had.

Natalia decides to leave the gorilla there.  He’s really too old to be fighting, and at least here, we know he’ll be happy.  I briefly consider leaving the little girl with the Wizard of Animals as well, thinking she’d be happier there as well, but when I hear Elianra mention that she has an apprentice, I decide against it.  (I didn’t know, until Jim told me after the game, that wizards sometimes take on more than one apprentice at a time.)

We leave.  The little girl isn’t happy about leaving the gorilla there.  Natalia tries to explain it to her.  Somehow, Tango gets mixed into the conversation.  The little girl keeps asking questions, Natalia keeps getting more confused and frustrated explaining everything to this kid, and Corin asks Iema if he can talk to him outside.

Iema and Corin step outside.  “That little girl is cursed,” Corin tells Iema.  “She’s been cursed by shypsies.  Everyone who’s ever taken care of her ends up dying.  My mum told me never to be around her.”

Iema considers it.  “Thank you for bringing that to my attention.  She’s just a little girl, though, so we can’t leave her.  But I’ll keep what you said in mind.”

Of course, Natalia hasn’t heard any of this, so she has no idea.  She spots Iema and Corin after they come back inside, goes to them, and they agree together to go to Uliver’s portable, uh, mansion.

We get back there, show the kids to Raelan and Uliver.  “Look at what we got!”  we tell then.

Realan frowns.  “Uh, yeah.  Kids.”

Corin asks, “Why are you wearing a dress?”

“It is NOT a dress,” Raelan says hotly.  And then he goes off on an angry tirade, something about what a bad ass he is, trying to prove his viciousness.  It’s quite a little speech.

“And that,” Iema tells Corin, “is why we don’t tell very powerful wizards that they’re wearing dresses.”

The little girl tugs on Natalia’s robes, leans over and whispers, “But it IS a dress.”

“I know,” Natalia whispers back.  “We’ll totally make fun of him for it later.”

This won’t take long.  Promise.  This session, to date, is THE shortest one we’ve had.  This will also be the last one where Jim and I are the only ones playing, as we’ve since invited Phil to join our games.  Forgot what happened in the last game?  Get caught up here.

Bracell the 24^th

Jim and I go for a lot of drives, just to chat and get away from the TV and the computer.  And, as you can imagine, our game does come up quite a bit.  One thing I had asked Jim:  While Natalia is out with Beta and Tango, who is taking care of their puppies?

Jim starts out this game by telling me that the puppies have been in the myconids’ care.  I didn’t know little mushroom guys were good baby-sitters–or wolf-sitters, in this case–but apparently, my myconids are.  And why not?  It’s not like wolves eat mushrooms, anyway, so it could work.

Jim also tells me when we start our game that the wolf puppies are ready to leave Tango.  So Natalia starts the game by heading to Raelan’s to not only to suggest they go to the next mage fair, but also to offer him a puppy.

It doesn’t take her long to get there.  Once there, Natalia explains that Julium is doing his military thing on Devies and wants them out of the area when he does so, and that going to the mage fair provides us the perfect excuse for being out of town.  Raelan agrees that if Julium wants us out, it’s probably a good idea.  And, thankfully, there’s a mage fair coming up very soon.  He would like to get there around Breizen the 4th.

Natalia agrees.  “Also,” she says, “Tango’s puppies are ready to leave their mom.  Want one?”

“Yes,” Raelan says.  “I want the smallest one.”

Natalia’s not sure why exactly he wants the smallest (I believe Raelan later explained that it will be the most vicious), but she heads back home, grabs the smallest, and runs back to Raelan to give him his puppy.

“Excellent,” he says in that creepy-I’m-totally-going-to-experiment-on-him voice.

“You are not going to hurt the puppy, are you?” I ask.

“No!”  he says.  “Well…not much, anyway.”

Natalia demands Raelan’s word that he won’t hurt the puppy.  He gives it, but I have a hunch he plans on “sprucing” the little guy up to be more than just a wolf.  I just hope it doesn’t hurt him, but I don’t think Raelan would do anything too painful to it.  For one, he knows it would piss Natalia off.

Raelan suggests that while we’re waiting for the mage fair, Natalia go ahead and scribe some scrolls to sell there.  Since druids will be pretty rare there–and because druidic spells can be reverse-engineered for wizards to create new spells–any scrolls Natalia scribes will probably sell well.  So Natalia goes off to drop off another wolf-puppy to Grugor, sends an animal messenger to Julium to let him know our plans to be out of the area, and then heads home to make scrolls.  She does this until Bracell the 26th.

Bracell the 27^th

On the morning of the 27th, Natalia wakes up to some commotion coming from underneath her tree house.  She hurries outside and looks down.  The myconids have surrounded a guy with spiky red hair and green skin.  He is wearing scale mail.

He looks up at her.  “Will you call them off, please?”

Natalia comes down, calls them off.  Natalia asks for this guy’s name, but he claims he doesn’t have one.  No Name says Vueliss wants to see Natalia.  Natalia agrees to go him and follows No Name into the Spruce Circle territory.

We finally get to a grove where there are other druids gathered.  Here, it is explained that Natalia is being invited to the Spruce Circle.  As you know, I hate a lot of its members, and especially its leader Vueliss and his son, Iverrias.  But the circle is involved in stuff that would be easier for me to figure out if I were in it, so Natalia agrees to join.

There’s a catch: Admittance into the Spruce Circle requires the druid to make a bogun.  What’s a bogun, you ask?  Good question.  I asked the same thing.  If you remember, I had run into them before in the fourth game.  And I’m going to steal Jim’s notes regarding them from his comments to that post, just because he describes it better than I can:

…The little bug things are called boguns. And to avoid confusion, the haughty elf she met didn’t make them all. Gury supplied the information that EVERY druid in the Circle must create a bogun for use by the circle to patrol their section of the forest. Boguns are constructs made from natural materials (leaves, twigs, dead turtle shells, rocks, mud, etc)

Okay, so that’s what a bogun is.  And now Natalia has to make one.  Problem: She doesn’t know how.

One of the half-elf druids nearby explain to her that this is not a problem.  Natalia is going to learn how.  All Natalia has to do it go into the cave nearby to learn the spell.

Natalia sees the cave the half-elf is talking about.  She goes past everyone, goes in, and sees that the cave actually spirals down.  There’s a glow at the bottom.  Natalia follows the spiral path downward until she reaches the bottom.  It opens up into a little room.  There are glowing streaks all over the wall.  I ask Jim if it’s in a pattern or says anything, and he says not really.  Or, at least, Natalia can’t make any sense of them.

There’s also a bed in this little room, with a gnome sleeping on it.

Natalia clears her throat.  He wakes up.

“Hey,” she says.  “Sorry to wake you.  I was told to go here to learn how to make a bogun…?”

“‘S okay,” he says.  The gnome has a raspy voice.  He hops out of bed, reaches out his hand to shake hers.  “How you doin’?  I’m Aqueous.”

Natalia reaches out to shake Aqueous’s hand.  Jim says when she shakes his hand, she notices that through his leather glove, it feels…squishy.

“Uh,” Natalia says, “that’s an interesting grip you’ve got there.”

“Yeah,” Aqueous agrees.  “I’m an ooze master.”

Natalia doesn’t know a lot about oozes, but the title “ooze master” tells her enough.  Her intelligence is only an 8, but she’s not totally stupid.

We get to work.  Aqueous puts slimy, glowy stuff on Natalia’s hands.  At first, I think it’s some mystical junk, but Aqueous explains that it’s actually so we can see in the dark here.  He then directs Natalia down a hall, telling her everything she needs to know is in there. 

Before she leaves, Natalia notices that one part of Aqueous’s face is slipping.  His eye finally droops out of his socket.  He realizes and pokes it back in.  “There,” he says.  “I hate it when that happens.”

Natalia gives him a strange look.  “Yeah.  I imagine that would be problematic for most people.  Well, I’m gonna get started.”

She goes.  Behind her, she can hear Aqueous muttering to himself, saying something about how now she’s going to think he’s crazy.  And I don’t mean muttering to himself like most people do when they’re trying to focus on something or griping under their breath.  I’m talking about someone who actually expects someone to say something back.

Natalia ignores it and keeps going.  Jim describes the hallway as seemingly endless.  He also says that Natalia feels a deep connection to this place.  There is ancient druidic writings on the walls.  Natalia reads as she goes, learning the spell.  It takes a long time.  She finally gets to the point where she realizes she needs materials for the spell before she can go on to the next part. 

The materials must be living or once living.  Obviously, Natalia isn’t going to find them in the cave, so she goes back out the hall, past Aqueous (who has fallen asleep again), up the spiral path, and out the cave.  All the druids that were there earlier are gone.

Natalia goes about collecting materials, such as twigs and branches among other things, and shapes it into something that resembles a cat.  I think Jim was disappointed that I didn’t get much crazier than that, but as far as I’m concerned, cats are the most awesome animals EVER and you can’t really beat ‘em, so why mess with perfection?

Natalia takes her wicker cat back down into the cave, back in the hallway again.  She creates a circle, puts the wicker cat in the middle, and starts chanting.  The connection to the place gets even stronger, but then Natalia feels a part of herself slipping away.  Jim explains to me that is a part of her soul disappearing into the bogun.

And then–it’s alive!

Jim then goes into great detail on the connection between Natalia and this wicker cat.  I soon find out why he wants me to understand the bond.  He tells me that remember, a piece of Natalia’s soul is in this wicker cat.  It’s a deep love between her and her bogun; it’s akin to a bond between a mother and her child.  Maybe even stronger.  Furthermore, she knows, without a doubt, that this thing is very much alive and has feelings.

Which makes the next part so very, very wrong.

Natalia happily takes the wicker cat upstairs and outside.  There are druids outside again, waiting for her.  This time, though, Vueliss appears.

Vueliss pushes past everyone.  “You’ve made the bogun?”  A scarred elf stands next to Vueliss, carefully watching our exchange. 

“Yes,” Natalia says.

“Good,”  he says.  He points to the scarred elf .  “This is the master of boguns.  Turn your bogun over to him.  Instruct it to report to and obey him and him only.”

“What?”  Natalia asks.  “I don’t–I don’t know…”  I give Jim a pleading look.  This all feels very, very wrong.

Iverrias steps in.  “Enough,” he spits.  “You knew what all this entailed.  Now hand the bogun over.”

No, Natalia did NOT know this part of the bargain.  I hate Vueliss.  I hate Iverrias.  I hate them both.

I get quiet for a really long time at this point in the game, debating what I’m supposed to do.  I guess the in-game reflection is that Natalia is gripping onto her bogun, her little wicker cat, also debating, feeling horrified.  Nieiumao is also standing nearby, watching the exchange, knowing that Natalia doesn’t want to give her bogun up.  He comes over to her.  “It’s up to you,” he says.  “But know this: If you refuse, that bogun isn’t getting out of here alive.  They’ll kill it.”

So, here are my options: 1) Natalia can refuse and they’ll kill her bogun, 2) she can try to run off with it, undoubtedly be attacked by the Circle, and we’ll BOTH be killed, or 3) turn the bogun over and hope for the best. 

As far as I can tell, #3 is the only way of keeping my bogun alive.

Natalia puts her bogun on the ground.  The wicker cat paws at Natalia’s leg.  Natalia can feel its feelings.  It doesn’t want to go. 

You know, I know this is just a game, but doing this is honestly hard.  ”Fine,” Natalia says glumly.  She reluctantly hands over her bogun, telling it to obey and report to the master of boguns.  It hisses at her and runs away, going to the master.

Vueliss and Iverrias leave immediately after, not caring about the effects their initiation has on Natalia.

“Will my bogun be okay?” Natalia asks a nearby druid.

She pauses.  “Hope…that it dies quickly.”

That doesn’t make me feel better at all.  Aqueous comes out; other druids,  except for Natalia, Nieiumao, Alpen and his gray render Licky, stay away from Aqueous.  Aqueous himself explains that he’s not really liked by the other druids, but since he’s the only one who can get past all the oozes to get to the magic in the cave, they put up with him.

Around her, druids gather around Natalia to welcome her to the Spruce Circle.  Nieiumao gives her a spruce staff as a gift.  People start mingling; a small party has started.  But Natalia still feels heartbroken about giving up her bogun.

It’s definitely the worst party Natalia has ever been to.  As soon as she can, she heads back home.

Bracell the 28^th-29^th

All Natalia does on these two days is scribe more scrolls for the mage fair.  Once we’re done, Jim tells me a couple of things–out of character, of course.

1) Giving up her bogun = black marks against Natalia.  Jim admitted that I picked what I thought was the lesser of the evils, but there was just no getting around it: Giving up a creature that you know is alive, has feelings, and OH MY GOD, SPRING, HAS A PIECE OF YOUR SOUL is an evil act. 

Did I argue this?  Yes.  At least my bogun is alive.  I didn’t realize it might not want to be, though.

2) Jim asked that we stop the game here.  I asked why.  By now, we had played for probably only an hour, if even that.  I might get tired quickly, but that’s a short game even by my standards.

And this is where Jim explained to me that the next part of the story would be Natalia’s going to her first mage fair.  He did have everything planned out, but in order for it to go as planned, well…he needed Phil.

So that’s it for game 13.  We played game 14 last night, our first game with Phil and his character, Iema.  (That’s pronounced EE-ma, by the way.  Kinda like “emo” with an a at the end.)  I’ll try to get that post up sometime this week, but that game was looooong, so it’s gonna take a bit to write up.

Until then.

Okay, people, back to the grindstone with another “Homebrewed.”  If you’ve forgotten where we’re at (hell, I did), you can read part 11 here.  Or, you can just read the quick recap:  Natalia, Grugor, and Raelan have been traveling the road south of Stilldale, trying to find out 1) who is attacking caravans between Stilldale and Devies, and 2) who really summoned the fire elemental that nearly burned down the forest–before the Spruce Circle decides to hang Raelan for the crime.  We’ve just battled Azers carrying Ashrats on their backs that attempted to attack a caravan, so that answers number 1.  But is number 1 related to number 2?  And, if so, who is orchestrating all this?

Bracell the 22^nd

Jim and I pick up the game right where we left off, on the afternoon of Bracell the 22nd, right after looting the bardic, big-assed Azer we battled in the last game.  You’d think that because we’re picking right off on the same day, we’d take off running in this game.  You’d be wrong.  Why?  Well, because we skipped a week, that’s why. 

Jim and I are finding that when we skip a week, we can’t remember how Natalia wanted to proceed in the last game, and then he asks me to make a decision.  And I’m not good with decisions.  I also barely remember what’s going on (despite my blogging about it), and worst of all, it’s almost like I’ve never played in the first place.  I get a case of cold feet all over again.  And it gets ugly.  I stall the game, suggesting to Jim that maybe I’m really not cut out to do this, maybe he’d have more fun doing this with people who are more familiar with D&D, and hell, maybe we should just BREAK UP and he should get a girl who is even GEEKIER and REALLY LOVES THESE STUPID GAMES and, by the way, if you do, Jim, you know she’s going to PROBABLY LOOK LIKE A MAN. 

In fact, I hope she does.

And then I feel better and move on.  You see what my poor boyfriend has to deal with?

With my obligatory stagefright/meltdown out of the way, Natalia asks Raelan and Grugor how they want to proceed.  We’ve already determined that it’s mostly likely a wizard behind summoning the Azers.  Do we hunt him (or her) down first, or do we go back to Stilldale and warn Julium about the Gnomish letter hinting toward his assassination?

“Well,” Raelan says, “I want to find the wizard who’s summoning these things, kill him, and take his spellbook.”

Natalia shoots Raelan a look.  “Okay, are you just doing that because you want his spells, or do you actually want to find out who was trying to burn down the forest?”

Raelan shrugs.  “Yeah, sure, I care about the forest.”  He is not convincing in the slightest.

“Well, what about telling Julium about what this letter says?”

Raelan frowns.  “I don’t think we should.  If we do, he’s just going to start a crusade to find out who it is, and that very act itself is what they’re waiting for before assassinating him.”

Good point.  Still not convinced that Raelan’s vote isn’t solely based on his wanting another wizard’s spellbook, though, Natalia turns to Grugor.  “Grugor, what do you think we should do?”

“Me not trust gnomes.”

“Okay, then,” Natalia says.  Yay, decision’s made.  “Uh, the Azer said it’s someplace in the mountains.  Some temple or something.  Yeah…that’s kind of big and vague.  We’re not going to be able to find that, are we?”

Raelan shakes his head.  “No, but I have another idea.  Something is pulling fire creatures from another plane, right?  So there’s a chance that other creatures from the fire plane have heard about this and might know something.  We can summon one here and ask.”

See, this is why Jim has all these NPCs with me: Because I can’t think of shit like that.  “Hey!” I say.  “That’s a good idea.  Let’s do that.”

“The problem is that it’s got to be someone we already know,” Raelan says.

Now, I might not be quick to come up with sneaky ways around things, but I’m not dumb, either.  I immediately eye Jim suspciously.  Or, I guess you could say, Natalia eyes Raelan suspciously.  Because I already know who he has in mind.  “You are not summoning Steam Broad,” I say.  Steam Broad, if you remember, is the steam mephit we first ran across in the fourth game, who had been summoned by Sorval to hunt down Raelan.  We ran into her again in the Astral Plane as well, along with her parents that I nickednamed Fire Bitch and Frost Bastard.

“Actually, Steam Broad is exactly who I had in mind.”

I sigh.  “FINE.”

Raelan tells Natalia he will need a drop of her blood, explaining that since Natalia was the last one that “killed” her (I guess she wasn’t really killed but banished), the drop of blood acts as my “permission” to call her back to this plane again.  I agree.  Raelan gets to work, sprinkling some silver stuff all over the place, and then he pricks Natalia’s finger with a needle and drops the blood in the middle of his sprinkled design.

Where the blood drops, steam appears, followed soon after by Steam Broad.  “Who dare summons me?” she damands in her nasally, too-small voice.  She looks up and sees Natalia.  “YOU!”

Jim describes what happens next to be like in those Loony Toon cartoons, like when Daffy Duck gets mad and bounces all over the place, going ballistic.  Steam Broad does the same thing, partly because she’s pissed at seeing us, and partly because she’s trying to get out of whatever shape Raelan sprinkled on the ground that’s apparently keeping her in place, like a magical cage.

She doesn’t succeed, and finally, she gives up, panting and glaring at us.  “What do you want?”

We explain to her what information we want.  She, of course, refuses to help.  Raelan suggests that we torture her.  “NO,” I say, putting my foot down.  That is something I can make a decision about.  “We are not summoning her here, keeping her locked into place, just to torture her.”

Finally, Steam Broad gives in–sort of.  She’s stuck, after all.  But she wants something in return.  “Entice me,” she says, rubbing her hands together greedily.

“What on Earth do you want?” I ask, exasperated.  I barely know what a freakin’ steam mephit is, much less what their greatest desires are.  Geez.

She looks at me like I’m the stupidest person alive.  Although, with my Intelligence at an 8, I might be.  “Riches,” she says.

“I don’t have that.  Hell, all I have is a treehouse.”

“Give me your treehouse!”

“NO.  God, what else could you want?”

She becomes animated.  “Riches!  Power!  WORSHIP!  BOW TO ME.”

And so it comes back to this.  “Yeah…no.  We’re not bowing to you.  So STOP SAYING THAT.”

Eventually, I find out that steam mephits like gems, so I fork over the 10 gold piece gem we got from the bardic Azer, along with a 20 gold piece sapphire that I had on me.  Steam Broad was happy, so she started talking:  Yes, she has heard about fire creatures being summoned from her plane.  Sort of.  It’s actually a portal, one that she claims has been there forever, and that portal has been opened between the fire plane and our plane.  Some magical force has been reaching through the portal, like a hand, and grabbing fire creatures from their plane to ours.  Her description of the portal definitely sounds Chenestik in nature, but she doesn’t know the location–only that it’s in some small mountains near the edge of the forest.

“That must be how the Azers got here then,” I say.  Steam Broad quickly catches what I say and demands to know what I’m talking about.  I describe the last Azer we’d see, the bardic one.

She looks interested.  “That’s Susspann,” she says.  Jim-as-Steam Broad hisses the “s” sounds, pops the “p” sounds loudly.  Very appropriate for a language for fire-based people, as it sounds like a fire…well, hissing and popping.  “You killed him?” she asks.

“Yeah.  Well…banished him from this plane, I guess,” I say.

She nods happily.  “Good.  He’s a prick.”

So, we now know little more about this portal, and we’re still clueless about the location.  Steam Broad knows where it is on her plane, but she only has a vague idea where it is on ours.  Then Raelan comes up with a brilliant suggestion: We go to the fire plane, have Steam Broad take us to the portal over there, and then we’ll come back through it on our side.  Grugor and I agree to this idea, Steam Broad agrees after being bribed with another gem (this time, one worth 125 gold pieces), and Raelan uses a message spell to get ahold of Uliver.

Uliver appears shortly.  His porting there takes Steam Broad by surpise, but she quickly recovers.  “BOW TO ME,” she demands.

To my surprise, he does.  He’s very gracious to her.  “And to whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?” he asks.

Steam Broad seems much happier in the worshipped role, and she takes it in stride.  “Ssissinip,” she says, again, prouncing the name with lots of hissing and pops. 

Huh?  Steam Broad has a name?  I don’t like this.  Quit giving my enemies DEPTH, Jim.  Whatever, I’m still calling her Steam Broad.

She waves at Uliver.  “You may stand.”

Before he does, Uliver kisses her hand, lightly singeing his lips.

We explain to Uliver what we want to do.  Uliver agrees to open a portal for us, but he suggests that we wait until the next day, so we can have appropriate spells ready and buffs up.  He offers to give us a spell on us that will protect us from a plane’s elements: In this case, fire.  He will give Raelan the scroll for the spell, so he can cast it once we get there.

Also, he wants us to be clear on one thing: He is not going with us.  No way, no how.  Am I surprised?  No.  Remember how fast he bailed when the entire town was fighting the black dragon? 

Uliver is a nice guy, he’s a great wizard, but he is also a chicken.

Whatever.  We stay there for the night.  Jim says that previous fire-based monsters have pretty much cleared the area already, so I don’t even have to roll for encounters.

Bracell the 23^rd

We get our spells ready, and Uliver opens a portal to the Astral Plane.  We hop on through.  Jim describes it as simply infinite.  He says Natalia sees specks everywhere, but she can’t tell if it’s actually doorways just very far away, or if it’s just specks of dust in her eyes.  Jim says it can be either; she’s not sure.

Jim also feels the need to tell me that how fast you fly in the Astral Plane is dependent on the character’s intelligence.  So Natalia is lagging behind everyone else–except for Steam Broad.

“I hate you, Jim,” I tell him.

He just laughs at me.  “You and Steam Broad have the EXACT SAME intelligence.”

“Shut up.”  I make a mental note that next time I can up a point in one of my scores, I should put it in Intelligence.

We fly along for what feels like FOREVER, and finally, we see a door ahead.  This one is definitely getting bigger.  We reach it.  Uliver says goodbye here, not-so-subtly hinting that we’re going to die, and teleports the hell out of there.  We go through the portal.  Jim says that Natalia feels like she’s on fire, that she can feel her skin blistering, that when she opens her mouth to scream, she can’t–she only feels flames.  Then, suddenly, it’s gone.  Raelan has put the protection spell on us.  All that’s left is that we’re a little pink. 

The landscape around us is, as Jim says, “blackened, charred, and twisted.”  Where we’d expect water, there’s magma.  Trees are blackened and perpetually in flames. 

“Hurry up, before someone sees us,” Steam Broad grumbles.

We follow Steam Broad to the portal on the fire plane.  I have to roll 8 times for encounters.  Surprisingly, I don’t get a single one, and we get to the portal.  I’m surprised we’re getting through the fire plane without fighting something, but that looks to be the case. 

Before we walk through the portal to the other side, Raelan turns around and speaks to Steam Broad.  “One second.  Do me a favor,” he says to her.

None of us expect what he does next.  Raelan motions with his hands, obviously casting, and to my surprise, he summons Fire Bitch–Steam Broad’s mother.

Is he doing a family reunion or something because she helped us? I think. 

That’s a big, fat NO.  What Raelan does next is cast some sort of god-awful spell, and it rains down on Fire Bitch, pummeling her.  She screams.

“Raelan, what are you doing?”  Natalia yells.  There’s no role-playing here; I’m horrified and confused as to why he’s doing this.  Fire Bitch is on the ground now, battered and in pieces.  Natalia realizes that this isn’t banishment, like what we did before.  Because we are in their home plane, Fire Bitch is now actually dead.

Raelan ignores Natalia’s protests and whips around on Steam Broad.  “I AM RAELAN, WIZARD OF VENGEANCE.  YOU TELL EVERYONE HERE THAT THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS IF THEY EVER CROSS ME!”

Steam Broad has already fled.  “Raelan!” Natalia says.  “What the hell did you do that for?”

He’s already calmed down.  He looks at Fire Bitch.  “She crossed us.”

“Fire Bitch?  But we already dealt with her before, she was done.  You summoned her here and then killed her, without her even having a chance to explain or defend herself!”

Raelan looks at Natalia.  “Do you have a problem with that?”

Yes.  I do.  But I, as Natalia, just grumble at Raelan.  I know he’s right that, yes, she had crossed us once before, but it was…I don’t know.  Different.  Jim tells me (out of character, of course) that, as a druid, Natalia would be bugged by this because for better or for worse, Fire Bitch is just an elemental being an elemental. 

That explains why Natalia is bothered by it, but it doesn’t explain why I’m bothered by it.  I secretly wonder if Raelan is going to lose himself with his growing powers, go evil or something.  I mean, c’mon.  Is he seriously considering taking the title of “Wizard of Vengeance”?

Suddenly, Sorval, the Wizard of Ribbons, doesn’t seem nearly as scary.

Raelan suggests we get ready with spells because whoever’s behind this is probably on the other side.  Natalia shakes off her uneasiness and agrees, preps Call Lightning, and casts Greater Magic Fang on both Beta and Tango.  We go through the portal.

We find ourselves in what Jim describes as a sinkhole.  The ground above has weakened and collapsed; below us, down a ways, there’s a cave.  Ahead of us, just below the “lip” of the ceiling, there is a gnome with tufts of hair, clad in robes, holding a large book.  I assume that’s the spell book Raelan wants so bad.  Nearby him is the lizard thing that the tree had described to Natalia, the two-legged one, something Natalia has never seen before.  They are near some eerie-looking campfire that doesn’t look quite “right.”  For one, it’s thin and only goes off the ground six inches.

We see them, they see us, and it’s straight into combat.

Because I have Call Lightning prepped, it’s the first thing I cast.  To Jim’s dismay, I roll well: 64 points of damage.  A little too well because I kill the gnome outright.  The weird fire then ripples toward us, kind of like a flying carpet, and the flames leap up, as if trying to engulf us.  Natalia, Grugor, and the wolves take 5 points of fire damage from that.  Grugor quickly chops the fire wall into pieces.  If I remember right, Raelan tries to fire something at the lizard thing, but it takes off running.  Natalia tries to snare it with Entangle, but it manages to get out.

“Should we gun it down?”  Raelan asks.

Jim has me roll an animal empathy check on it.  He says Natalia can tell that it’s an animal–granted, a very intelligent animal–simply acting like an animal.  “No,” Natalia says.

(And then, later, after the game, Jim will tell me that, ironically, I killed the non-aligned creature and let the very much evilly-aligned creature run off.  Lovely.)

About here is where another “non-scheduled break” popped up.  Jim was disappointed in how quickly we killed the gnome wizard.  I guess he was supposed to be the boss fight, but neither one of us anticipated how quickly Natalia would kill him.  Jim’s disappointment upset me.  Then we got into a whole talking bit that I won’t go into here, but basically, he was worried about disappointing me, and I was worried that I screwed something up and was disappointing him.  Eventually, I pointed out to him that I don’t know enough about D&D to be disappointed, and furthermore, I don’t really like  that much of a challenge anyway.  I mean, hey, if we’re being honest here…

Jim and I quit whining and go back to the game.  Raelan finds on the gnome some gold and a letter.  He opens the letter and reads it.  “HA.  Well, this explains a lot.”

“What is it?”  Natalia says, getting closer to him to read it.   The letter refers to the gnome wizard as Talaz.  It’s written in Numbraran, entitling Talaz to stop the elven druids, by any means necessary, from attacking the empire.

Well, looks like we found who was behind all these attacks.  We decide to head back to town.  Before we do, Raelan flips through Talaz’s spellbook.  He only finds two spells he likes; the rest are worthless to him.  He decides that he’ll copy the two spells he wants and then sell the book at the upcoming mage fair. 

Raelan deactivates the portal, hides it behind some tree branches, and we go back to Stilldale, taking Talaz’s head as proof of the one behind summoning fire-based elementals.  I’m starting to find out why it gets harder to get XP at later levels: At this point, I no longer roll for encounters because Jim says any bad guys in the area know Natalia by reputation and are going to stay away.  If I run into anyone in the forest, it’s going to be because they’re looking for me.  I guess it’ll make getting from one place to another easier, at least.

Once we get to Stilldale, Grugor and Raelan head their separate ways.  Natalia finds Julium at the guardhouse, talking to a man cloaked in gray that speaks in a gravelly voice.  He introduces the man as Jerth.

Jerth looks at Natalia with interest and asks, “Is this the one you wanted me to talk about poisons with?”

Poisons?

“Yes,” Julium tells him.

Natalia asks Julium if she can speak with him alone.  Hell, she doesn’t know this Jerth guy.  Jerth leaves, and Natalia hands the writ to Julium.  He reads it.

“This is exactly the kind of behavior I’m crusading against,” Julium says.

“Crusading?” Natalia repeats, thinking of the other letter we had found, the one hinting that if Julium “finds out” about something, does some sort of crusade, that he’ll be assassinated.  She wonders briefly if she should tell him about that letter, then remembers what Raelan has said, and pushes the thought aside.

“Yes,” Julium says.  “Furthermore, they’re doing all this for profit, too.  But we have a plan.  It’s going to happen after you and Raelan leave for the mage fair.”

“Why?”

“Because we don’t want you in the cross fire.”  Julium goes on that he’s sent a message of sorts to the head guy of Devies, telling him to step down.  Naturally, the guy isn’t going to reliquinsh his power any time soon, so Julium has a plan in the works to dismantle him.

Natalia looks at Julium warily.  “Does it involve that guy poisoning someone?” she asks, referring to Jerth.

“Actually, he needs to talk to you about getting poisons.”

Natalia nods.  She tells Julium that she needs to get going; after all, she has a head to deliver.  Before she leaves, though, she says, “Hey, Julium?  Keep Allista nearby you, okay?”

He says, “I plan on it.”

Good.  Makes it heard to assassinate someone when his fiancée is guarding him, reading your thoughts.

Natalia then makes her way to Spruce Circle territory.  Again, I don’t have to roll for encounters.  When I get there, the child druid with the gray renger pops up.  “HI.”

We stop.  “Hello,” Natalia says.

“What do you want?”

“I need to see Vueliss.”  I imagine Natalia trying to step around him, but the kid won’t let her pass.

“You can’t.”

“Why not? I have to give this head to him,” I say.  “It’s the gnome that summoned the fire elemental.  He wanted it.”

“Can I see it?”

Natalia thinks about it for a moment, and then hands the head to him.  The kid quickly puts his hand inside the head, making a puppet out of it.  “Hello!” he squawks, moving the dead gnome’s mouth.  “I’m a gnome!”

“Give me that head back,” Natalia says, snatching the skull back.

“You can give the head to me; I’m part of the Circle.”

Natalia looks doubtful. ”You’re in the Circle?”   A kid–a human kid, to boot–part of the snobbish, racist, Elven-led Circle?  “How did you manage that?”

“I bonded with a gray render,” he says.

“So?”

“And I let him eat my parents.”

“Oh,” says Natalia.  That explains it.

“Can I have the head now?”

“No.  Where’s Gury?” I ask.  I’d much rather give him the head; at least, I’d know it’d be safe.

“Being naked somewhere.  He’s naked a LOT.”

I sigh.

“Can I please have the head?”

Natalia is reluctant to let go of the head.  “I don’t even know you.”

“I’m Alpen,” he says.  “And this is Licky.  And you’re Natalia.  And I let a gray render eat my parents.  Now you know me.  Can I have the head now?”  When he sees that Natalia is still deciding, he adds, “Vueliss doesn’t actually need the head, you know.  He just needs to know what whatever summoned the elemental is dead.  You give me the head, and I’ll tell Vueliss you killed him.”

I give in.  At this point, I figure the worst case scenario would be that Vueliss will decide I hadn’t found the culprit, go after Raelan, thus giving me an excuse to go after him.  “Fine, whatever, kid, take the damned head.”  Natalia tosses it over at him.

Alpen immediately puts his hand back inside of the head, making the mouth move as if the head was talking again.  “Thank you for killing me!”  he squeaks.  “Thank you for stopping the fire elemental and killing the mean gnome who was going to burn down the forest!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah…”  Natalia turns around and starts walking away.

“Hey!”  Alpen calls.  She turns around, and he says, “Do you want to be part of the Circle?  Because after this, I bet Vueliss will let  you in.”

Natalia really doesn’t want to be part of the Circle Jerks.  Out of character, I tell Jim as much.  But it wouldn’t hurt to be in it as a spy.  So Natalia shrugs and says, “Sure, why not?”

Alpen nods eagerly.  “Okay, I’ll tell Vueliss that you want to be part of the Circle, then.”  He holds the head up on his hand, puppeteering it again.  “Goodbye, Natalia!  Goodbye!”

Until the next game…

Before I jump into the gory details of our game, a note:  Our “Homebrewed” games have always run on Sundays for anywhere from 6 to 8 hours.  Now that Jim has started gaming with Phil and his other friends on Saturdays, we don’t want our Sundays, our only full day together, to be devoted to D&D.  Heaven forbid, we want couple-time.  So we’re trying to do this on Fridays now, after I get off work, which means that the games will be much shorter (and the ”Homebrewed” posts won’t take so freakin’ long to read/write!), but, as we found out, it also means I’m lethargic by the end of the game.  Doing both work and D&D in one day might just be a tad too much for me.  We’ll see how it goes.

This week starts with me breaking out a new notebook for notes and Jim asking me–ME, of all people!–to remind him who was with Natalia in the cave.  Yes, it’s been that long.  D’oh!

So a lot of this game is mostly us trying to get back into the swing of things.  But enough talking.  On with it!

Bracell the 19^th

We spend the night in the cave.  Once it’s morning again, Natalia gets to prepare her spell list for the day.  Because we’re facing different challenges, I’m picking different spells than I usually do.  I really love this part because it gives me an excuse to throw in spells I’ve never used before just to see what they do.

My choices this morning make sense though.  The first thing I have Natalia cast is Remove Disease to take care of the gangrene on the man and woman.  While it does take care of the gangrene, their legs are still damaged, so I throw in a Lesser Restoration.  Then Jim has me roll a heal check, although I’m not sure why.  Once I succeed in the heal check, Jim explains why: Natalia has figured out that the man is on the verge of death.  His constitution score is a 1.

(This then begins a lengthy explanation of how one can have full hit points but still be near death if their Constitution score is at a 1.  I did not know this, and while I get it technically, it still makes no sense to me.  In real life terms, how can you have all your hit points but 0 Constitution?  Anyone who wants to explain to me how this works, feel free.)

Natalia tells Raelan and Grugor what she’s learned.  “Do we take them back to town?” she asks.

“I don’t see where we really have a choice,” says Raelan, sounding disappointed.  Like Natalia, he likes to see some action and going back to town doesn’t seem very exciting.

Natalia and I both agree and start working on some makeshift crutches for the pair.  Meanwhile, we learn that the man’s name is Mikus and the woman’s name is Juleese.  Natalia hands them the crutches, and then she turns into a horse so they can ride her into town.

God, saying that makes my druid sound like the village slut, but really, she’s not whorey, she’s handy.

That being said, we take off into town and have absolutely no encounters.  I’m glad we don’t have any with the two of them around because Mikus would totally die if someone even looked at him cross-eyed, but in general, it would be nice to have more encounters.  We could use some freakin’ clues about who summoned the fire elemental.

And XP, heh.

We go to the temple and find Roan reading to some children.  Doesn’t she ever waste her time?  You know, drink, play cards, pick her nose, something?  She looks up, sees us standing at the door, and quickly calls someone over to take her place.  Once they’ve taken over for her, she walks over to us.  “Can I help you?”

Natalia introduces Mikus and Juleese, explains that Mikus especially needs help.  Roan thanks the party for bringing them to her.  “By the way,” she says to Natalia, “you look much better than last time I saw you.”

Both Natalia and I are confused where Jim/Roan is going with this.  “Huh?  What do you mean?”

“I don’t know,” Jim-as-Roan says.  “You have more…color.”

Pause.  I stare at Jim.

I don’t get it until Jim laughs and says, “Get it?  Get it?”  He points at my mini representing Natalia on the battlemap.

Oh.  I get it.  Jim recently painted my mini, so now she’s no longer plain black.  (By the way, Natalia isn’t supposed to be a blond; she’s brunette, but Jim forgot and made her blond.)

I roll my eyes at Jim’s joke while he says, “THAT WAS GOOD.  YOU HAVE TO ADMIT THAT WAS GOOD.”

Rather than admit to anything, I tell Jim that Natalia wants to find Julium to see if he can translate this Gnomish letter she found in the fire giant’s cave.  We hunt him down, but Julium doesn’t really know Gnomish.  He can make out a couple words but doubts that the letter has anything to do with who summoned the fire elemental.

Which, incidentally, is not what I want to hear.  I’m grouchy.  I’m tired.  We decide we’ll look for more clues on the road south of town since we covered the one going north.  But we’ll wait until morning, once we can redo our spells again.  Meanwhile, townspeople find out that Natalia’s in town and start coming to her with questions about their sick animals, failing crops.  Natalia’s feeling is that an educated society is a better society, so she spends the rest of her day in Stilldale, helping out with sick animals, giving advice on how to improve crops.

Bracell the 20^th

Natalia meets Raelan and Grugor at the appointed place.  Raelan is bustling with energy.  “They have a new graveyard guardian,” he says.  “Boy, does he hate you.”

At first, Natalia is uninterested in the new graveyard guardian’s opinion.  She just wants to keep moving.  But Raelan keeps talking about the new graveyard guardian of Stilldale, how he was trying to make a deal with it in exchange for spells, but the graveyard guardian won’t even talk to Raelan because he runs with Natalia.  The guardian also hates Roan.  Finally, curiousity wins out.  “What’s the guardian’s problem with us?”  Natalia asks.  I mean, who would hate a good-doer like Roan?

“Well, he’s one of the conscripts that was with you two when you were fighting Mushroostopheles in the graveyard,” Raelan shrugs.  “He blames you guys for him dying.”

Oooooh.  One of the conscripts, one of those puking up their internal organs.  Not that it was our fault, but I could at least understand his bitterness.  Hard to be logical when you’re literally puking your guts up.

Enough gossip.  We head down the road going south from town.  And, finally, when Jim has me roll for encounters, I finally get one!  Jim says we hear fighting  ahead, see some trees moving around.  We take a peek.  It’s another hill giant, although this one, oddly enough, is well-geared and wields a studded club.  And hey!  It’s that group of travelers from before, in the 7th game, the one that was fighting hill giants then, too!  The dwarf, Reneat (pronounced “Renee,” by the way), sees Natalia and waves.  She waves back.

His party doesn’t seem as pleased to see the rest of my party, though.  In particular, Reneat’s wizard and Raelan won’t take their eyes off each other.  It’s not in a lovey-dovey way, though.  It’s in the “I know you’re going to kill me” way.  Although, now that I think about it, that sounds remarkably like a lot of marriages I know about.

Reneat nods Natalia over to the side.  She jogs over to meet him.  Reneat wants to compare quests, just to make sure that we’re not stepping on each other’s toes.  They are trying to find out about hill giants that are organizing to take over the cities.  I tell him about the myconid drug-smuggling ring, the fire elemental, and the letter written in Gnomish that we got off the fire giant we had killed.  “Do you read Gnomish?” I finally ask.

“Sure!  Mind if I see that letter?”

Natalia hands it over.  Reneat reads it and frowns.

“Are you familiar with thieves guilds?” Reneat asks.

Out of character, I confirm with Jim that they’re run similarly to the mafia.  Once I do, Natalia confirms that, yes, she is familiar with thieves guilds.

Reneat remarks that the letter is written in thieves cant, some kind of code.  He can make out some of it, though.  He says the gist of the letter is about how someone kind of high up in one of the towns is being watched, and that they will assassinate him if he gets too close to…something.  We don’t know what.  But something that someone’s hiding.  The person being watched sounds like they have military aspirations–

“Julium,” Natalia says suddenly, startling Reneat.  When he looks up, she explains who he is.  Reneat nods, agreeing that it does sound like Julium is the target.  Furthermore, based on Reneat’s translation, it sounds like the intended reader of the letter is none other than that rude gnome Rosco, from way back, the one that hangs out with Creepy Lady, aka Virbéné.  Well, well, well.  Small world.  Or forest.  Whatever.

Since Reneat helped Natalia out, Natalia gladly returns the favor when he asks which town a psionist lives in.  In their quest, they have an insider among the hill giants that knows that they’re planning on attacking either Devies or Stilldale.  “But hill giants are afraid of psionicists.  So we figure if we plant that information to them, then they’ll hit the town without the psionicist.”

“Increasing the odds of you guessing which town they’re going to attack from 50% to 100%,”  Natalia concludes.

Reneat nods.  “We’ll ambush them outside of town.”

Sounds like a good plan, but right now, the best plan is to get our people apart.  Raelan and the other wizard are standing toe to toe, looking at each other menacingly.  I’m afraid a fight will break out–you know wizards and their duels.  Gurgor, on the other hand, doesn’t look very interested in the other party at all.

Natalia goes back to Grugor and Raelan; Reneat and his guys head off.  “I not trust that dwarf,” Grugor says, watching Reneat walk away.

“Why?” Natalia asks, surprised.  “He seems nice enough.”

“He crazy.  He just attack hill giant.”

“Grugor, I’ve seen you just run off and attack hill giants,” Natalia says.

“But me half-orc.  Him dwarf acting like he an orc.  Him crazy.”

I guess I can see his point.  Regardless, we keep going.  Finally, we call it a night and set up camp.

Bracell the 21^st 

We get up and decide to keep going south.  Roll for encounter!  Again, I get lucky and hit one.  Up ahead, we see three caravans.  The first driver pulls over, asks us if we need anything, since, you know, we’re standing in the middle of the road.

This is a perfect opportunity, since the “fire-breathing dwarves” have been attacking caravans going into town.  We update the driver on the attacks and ask if we can go along with.  We’re even willing to walk alongside the caravans, since there’s no room to sit on them.  The drivers agree, and so we head back north, walking next to the caravans.  Jim has me roll for encounters.  Score!  For us, anyway.  Turns out not to be so good for the drivers.

We hear a rumbling.  Suddenly, there are four bronze creatures that, yes, do look like dwarves, springing up from the ground and surrounding the caravans.  I later find out they’re something called Azers.  They wear no clothes save the gladiator “skirt/kilt” thingy made of metal.  Where their beards, eyebrows, and hair would be, there are flames.  Like they weren’t bad enough on their own, they have creatures on their backs.  Jim has me rolls a Knowledge of Nature (or was it Wilderness Lore?) check, and when I succeed, he says that Natalia knows these are Ash Rats, although she’s not sure why they’d be on the Azers’ backs.

One of the Azers hurls a javelin at Raelan and impales him with it.  Jim cringes when he rolls for it and sees that Raelen takes full damage.

Next, it’s the Ash Rats’ turn.  They blow fire and immediately take out all three drivers. Well, they didn’t last long.  They weren’t the only ones in the line of fire, either, as both Beta and Tango take 3 points of fire damage themselves.

Finally, my turn!  I get to use a spell that I’ve never used before, Ice Storm.  I’m still trying to get my head wrapped around the idea that I have to roll for two types of damage, one being impact, the other cold.  I roll an 8 and a 7 respectively.  The Ice Storm spells kills the Ash Rats outright.  Two of the Azers get hurt, but the other two aren’t hurt at all.  In fact, they don’t even seem impressed.

Beta and Tango go at it.  Beta misses, but Tango manages to crit and kill one of the Azers.  Another Azer from up front attacks Natalia, swinging at her with his warhammer.  And it’s HOT.  I guess that’s not surprising, but Natalia takes 8 points of damage for that.

Grugor starts doing his barbarian thing on one of the Azers.  Two others run up at Natalia to attack her, but Grugor is a Devoted Defender (some sort of prestiege class), which allows him to swap places with whomever he’s defending and take attacks of opportunities where others would not normally be allowed.   Jim describes him spinning Natalia out of the way and taking her place, much like partners would do-si-do in a square dance.  But that’s where the quaintness stops as Grugor starts hacking at Azers.

Raelan gets over being impaled (big baby, heh) long enough to blast Magic Missiles in an Azer.  We’re down to one now.  Just to see if it would work, Natalia yells, “HALT.”

The Azer stops.  To my surprise, it can speak English.  Er, I mean Common.  “Yes?”  It asks.

And so begins the questioning.  Natalia marches up to the Azer.  “You can either die or talk to us.  Do you want to die?”

“I’d prefer not to.”

“What are you?”

“An Azer.”

“Ooooh, so that’s what one looks like,” we hear Raelan murmuring.  Natalia looks at him questioningly.  “I’ve heard of them before, but I’ve never seen one, ” he explains.  “They’re summoned by either wizards or clerics.”

That, at least, narrows down the list of suspects.  “Who summoned you?” Natalia asks.

“I cannot say.”

I look at it suspiciously until Raelan says, “That makes sense.  If he’s been summoned, then he probably isn’t allowed to say.”

Natalia decides to try to work around this.  “Okay, fine then.  Where were you summoned?”  HA.  TAKE THAT.

“Northeast from here, in the mountains, in some kind of shrine or temple,” it answers.

Okay, I’ve no idea where that is.  So much for my brilliant idea.  Natalia asks it if it has anything to do with the fire elemental, and it says no.

How discouraging.

Now the Azer and Natalia are staring at each other.  Natalia isn’t sure what to do next.  Kill it?  If she lets it go, won’t it just keep attacking caravans?  “I’d ask it if it’s going to keep doing what it’s doing, but it’s not like it’s going to tell me the truth,” she says aloud.

Raelan shrugs.  “Why not?  Azers don’t lie.”

“They don’t?”  Natalia turns back to the Azer.  “Uh…if we let you go, are you going to keep attacking caravans?”

It looks her in the eye.  “Yes.”

“Oh.”  She pauses.  “Well, then, we’re going to have to kill you.  Nothing personal.”

The Azer shrugs.  And combat resumes.  Tango quickly kills the Azer, and then Beta goes about burying the drivers as best as a wolf can manage while Raelan sets to cutting pieces of the Ash Rats for spell components.  “Man, I’d like to get my hands on some live Ash Rats.”

Natalia and I are both suspicious of this comment.  “Why?”

“To teach it stuff, of course!”

That doesn’t sound so bad.  Natalia says, “Raelan, remind me sometime, when we’re not busy, to help you with getting an Ash Rat.”

He quickly agrees.  After he’s done, we track scorch marks from the Azers as far as we can before camping for the night.  Both night watches are uneventful.

Bracell the 22^nd

When we wake up, Natalia casts Greater Magic Fang on the wolves and we set out.  On the very first roll, I get an enounter.  Grugor sniffs and comments that he smells smoke.  Then he yells, “AMBUSH.”

Grguor takes a step back so he’s in line with Natalia.  Ahead of them, there are four more Azers lined up, all with Ash Rats on their backs.  Behind them, there is a much larger Azer, which is carrying a horn.  In my notes, I call him Big Azer, or (appropriately enough), “B.A.”

Natalia casts Ice Storm again.    Once again, it takes out all the Ash Rats instantly.  Jim then tells me that B.A. “toodles” on his horn (I found his verb choice very amusing), that he gets a 19 on his perform check, and it causes the other Azers to come running and screaming at us like madmen.  I kind of raised an eyebrow when I heard Jim mention something about a perform check.  I don’t know a lot about D&D, but I’ve gotten to the Bard section of Jim’s 3e handbook to know that a perform check sounded…well, bardish.  (Turns out that I was right.)

One of the Azers try to attack Natalia, but Grugor switches places with her and kills that guy easily, then cleaves and kills another one.  You know he totally would have gotten the girls in high school.  Either that or expelled.  Not sure which.

Raelan puts Magic Missiles in an Azer that’s nearby Tango.  Grugor goes off and kills another, Natalia whips out her scimitar and goes to work, as do my wolves.  Finally, it’s just us verus B.A.  B.A. blows its horn again, and Tango and Natalia are the only ones that make their will saves.  What does this mean?  It means that everyone else is freakin’ BLIND, and on their turns, they’re either rubbing their eyes or stumbling around.

Great.

Natalia tries another spell she hasn’t tried before: Creeping Cold.  But, sadly, I cannot overcome B.A.’s spell resistance and it doesn’t do any good.  In fact, he does another little ditty on his horn and heals himself up some.  Jim says Natalia notices right then that B.A. has some sort of rank insignia engraved in its arm.  Tango tries to get at B.A. but misses as well.  Natalia goes after it with Creeping Cold again, but luckily, this time, it works!  Jim says that even though it’s almost immediately dispelled by the fire, it’s obvious that the spell is hurting B.A.

Finally, people are coming to.  Beta is no longer blind but pissed.  He runs up to attack B.A. but misses.  B.A. stumbles back, blows his horn again, and we all have to make fortitude saves.  This time, Tango fails and is stunned.  Raelan snaps out of his blindness around now and blasts more Magic Missiles into B.A.  Natalia turns into a tiger, I roll well, and we SHRED B.A. to pieces.

The Azer disappeared to wherever Azers go, but he did leave some good stuff behind.  We divvied up the loot: A set of bracers, 2 sets of full plate mail, a large steel shield, and a chainmail sack with 10 gold piece gems and 1413 gold inside.  Raelan theorizes that B.A. was either paid with that or it looted it off of people that the Azers were attacking.  Oh, but one thing to note:  All the items are magical.  Now that’s interesting.

Sadly, this is where we had to end game, not because we were on a particularly interesting stopping point, but because yours truly was about to fall asleep sitting up.  Total XP for the day?  A measly 1,533.  So Natalia didn’t get to level 10.

Yet.

Welcome back with Part 10 of “Homebrewed,” the on-going D&D campaign that Jim is running for me.  I’d do a recap of the last game, but it was so short, it would almost be faster to just read the whole damned post here.  But enough of the introductions.  Let’s jump into the game, shall we?

Bracell the 12^th

The game opens up on a new day with Natalia at home in her partially-built treehouse.   And I’ve been a good gamer this week.  Well, kind of.  I still don’t think I come with the kind of elaborate plans that Jim would like me to have, but this week, I did decide that Natalia would be at her partially-built treehouse thinking about a subject that I had almost forgotten: Chenestes.

We were investigating it, then got caught up with other things, and…what were we looking for?  I don’t know about Natalia, but I have a horrible memory.  But seeing the hobgoblin cult—you know, the ones that worship the demi-god and kill undead?—brought Chenestes back to the foreground in my mind.  But I don’t remember much.  I remember strange writing on coins and armor.  So I tell Jim that Natalia is going to visit Raelan about this.  I’m hoping that Jim will be impressed that I had an idea how to start the game this week, and really (and secretly) hoping that Jim-as-Raelan will remind me why I wanted to learn about Chenestes in the first place.  Because, you know.  I forgot.

And this is why I would not make a good detective.  Oh, I can solve things—ask Jim about how well I predict endings of movies—but only if the clues are given to me in a short enough time period so that I won’t forget them.  Otherwise, forget it.  It ain’t happenin’.

So Natalia ventures off.  And, of course, my slave driver/boyfriend/DM has other plans for me.

Natalia is gallivanting off in the woods towards Raelan when she runs into a fire elemental.  It’s not even paying much attention to Natalia, but what it is doing is making a mess.  Must be a boy fire elemental.  It’s going from tree to tree, touching each one, and causing each to burst to flames.

OOOOH.  Fire elemental, welcome to burning druid hatred!  I imagine Natalia channeling Sailor Moon when she’s up against a foe: “In the name of the moon, I will not forgive you!”  Except Natalia doesn’t have a tiara.  Poor Natalia.  Because every girl should be able to throw headgear like a boomerang at annoying people and then wear their weapon like a crown.  But I digress.

I have a hunch that it’s not going to work, as I didn’t exactly plan for fire-based creatures in my stroll, but I try casting Entanglement because I took, like, three of them, and I figured if it didn’t work, it’s not like I can’t use it later.  Unsurprisingly, it just burns away on the fire elemental.  Hey, I told you I was new at this stuff; don’t judge.  So I decide to turn into a tiger and attack it, although I’m not sure how Natalia is going to attack it and not get hurt.

Guess what?  She doesn’t!  She doesn’t not get hurt that is.  God, I’m a moron.  The cool thing about tigers is that you get three attacks: Two claws and a bite.  That also means two burnt paws and a burnt mouth.  Did I mention that Natalia’s intelligence is still at an 8?  Did I mention that sometimes, I think mine is, too?

I get hurt so bad that I actually run away from the fight, something I almost never do.  The fire elemental doesn’t chase me, so Natalia keeps him in sight and heals up.  Jim says the fire elemental sees Natalia but isn’t concerned.  Fire elementals are dumber than Natalia, apparently.  Jim explains that the fire elemental isn’t concerned with Natalia because she’s a human, and hell, it was a tiger that attacked him before.

I still can’t let this fire elemental go around creating forest fires.  What would Smokey say?  So I announce to Jim that Natalia is prepping Call Lightning and following the elemental around until the spell is ready.  Finally it is.  Beta and Tango attack, I summon Call Lightning on the elemental’s ass, and it finally drops.  Beta drops, too, because, uh, I failed my spellcraft check and he got caught in the area of effect of my spell.  Oops.  Sorry, Beta!  Luckily, he’s only unconscious and not dead.  The fire elemental, however, is not coming back.

But now I have a mess on my hands.  The fire is raging.  I try conjuring water and manage to put out one single tree.  Shit!   Worthless spell.  And I can’t think of anyone who can really help or who would even really care that much except for…well, other druids.

If you recall, I dislike most of the other druids in this place.  However, some grudges have to be set aside for the greater good.  Still, I’m going to go first to the one and only druid that I’ve met so far that isn’t a complete douche: Gury.

Natalia changes into an eagle and flies to where she last remembers seeing Gury.  It’s not hard to find him.  I mean, naked old men are hard to miss, not matter how much you would like it to be the case.  Natalia quickly spots him sunbathing in the nude, lands, transforms back into a human, and tells him what’s happening.

Gury summons a hawk to go check out the area she’s pointed out.  Then he asks her if she knows a group of people.  Wizards and barbarians won’t help here.  “The myconids?” she says.  “They’re living underneath my treehouse.”

“Myconids would be perfect,” he says.  “Go grab them.  We can do a chain to use the nearby creeks to put out the flames.”  Natalia and Gury agree to meet where the fires are.

So Natalia transforms back into an eagle in order to hurry home and get the myconids, who quickly agree to help her.  She leads them back to the fires.  The fires have gotten worse.  Jim says that other druids are starting to show up.  A black hawk lands nearby and transforms into…guess who?

That god-awful elf Natalia ran into so many games ago, back when she was naïve enough to think she wanted to meet other druids.  He’s the son of Vueliss, the leader of the Spruce Circle.  And he’s still a dick.

“What did you do?” he demands, getting right into Natalia’s face.

“What I did was stop the fire elemental that started this,” Natalia shoots back.  Like she’s going to take shit from this stupid elf.

Gury says, “Iverrias, shut up and help.”

More and more druids are showing up, summoning water elementals to help extinguish the flames.  Some of the druids, Natalia notices, are a mishmash of animal parts.  Weird.  The myconids are at work, too.  Among the crowd is a gray render, and luckily, one Natalia isn’t fighting.  This one is attached to a druidic child and is taking his orders to help out.

Natalia notices another elven druid nearby.  He’s darker than most of the other druids.  Jim will later tell me that he’s a rock druid and has more of a red skin tone.  He’s covered in tattoos and piercings.  (To which I immediately say, “Ew.”)  Anyway, this elf is dancing around like a lunatic, but the fires are starting to die down wherever he’s at.  Soon, druids start pointing to the sky.  A massive hawk appears with two smaller ones behind him.  He lands and transforms into the oldest elf Natalia has ever seen.  He’s huge.

He’s obviously Vueliss, the leader of the Spuce Circle.

Vueliss orders everyone into a circle.  Natalia obliges.  Jim asks me if Natalia is willing to sacrifice a spell to help the druidic circle magic.  Natalia is more than happy to; Spring is a little more grudging about it.  My spells!  My precious, few spells!

The sky begins to darken and thicken.  Finally, it begins to pour.  Natalia has never seen it rain so hard.  People around her are cheering as the flames are dying down.  The child druid is clapping.  His gray render cheers along with him.

The red-skinned elf come up to Natalia.  “Are you Natalia?”

“Yes.”  I imagine Natalia looking at him suspiciously.  Even if I hadn’t rolled for a distrust of elves on the What Went Wrong table after Natalia was killed and resurrected, I think she would be suspicious of him just because he’s part of the Spruce Circle.

Whatever suspicions she has, he doesn’t seem to notice.  He introduces himself as Nieiumao, thanks Natalia, and tells her she did the right thing.  Not everyone agrees, though.  Vueliss comes up and starts accusing Natalia of starting it.  Before Natalia can defend herself, Iverrias also jumps with the accusations as well.  Nieiumao quickly comes to her defense, arguing with the two of them in Elven.

So, obviously, I have no idea what was said.  But I do find out that Iverrias thinks that either Raelan has something to do with the fire elemental or that Natalia summoned it and it got loose.  After more arguing, Iverrias finally spits at Natalia that she better find out who did summon that elemental.  If she doesn’t, they will assume that it’s Raelan and kill him.  She has until the autumn festival to find out.

Good god, everyone wants to kill Raelan.  These stupid elves with even make up stories to have an excuse to do it.

Another little source of tension: During all this, Vueliss notices that the myconids are with Natalia and gets angry, stating they should be with the Circle.  He tries to control them.  Natalia does her Plant Dominance thing on them, and the myconids purposely fail whatever check it is that keeps them from getting dominated by her, as they’d rather be in her services than Vueliss’s.  This, of course, make Vueliss even angrier.

Nothing like pissing off the head of the Circle Jerks.

Before Natalia takes off, Nieiumao tells her that, for the record, he doesn’t think Raelan had anything to do with the fire elemental either.  Turns out Nieiumao was one of the druids who had helped Raelan, helped him set up his tower so nobody but druids could find him.  Hm.  Maybe this elf isn’t half-bad after all.

Natalia turns into an eagle and flies over to Raelan’s.  She knocks on the door.  To her surprise, the door doesn’t make an announcement of any kind anymore.

“You removed it?” she asks when he answers the door.

“Of course,” Raelan says.

Natalia and I both feel a little proud that Raelan has finally reached the level to remove the spell on the door and a little saddened that we will not be able to hear the door booming about how it wasn’t taking apprentices.  Oh, we all grow up so fast…

Raelan interrupts our thoughts here, inviting Natalia to come down into the basement.  He wants to show her something.

I feel suspicious.  “Uh…do you have another familiar?  Because I already pet your familiar.”

Jim/Raelan looks surprised.  “What?  No!”

So Natalia follows.  On the way, I get Raelan caught up to speed on who wants to kill him this time, what we need to do to get him out of it.  But for now: Let’s see what’s in the basement.  It turns out that our old friend Al’Nobor, and he’s been summoned there to do transactions with Raelan.  Raelan finishes his transaction with Al’Nobor—turns out he was selling leftovers from that dragon we killed—and then Al’Nobor asks Natalia if she’s interested in anything.  She really only wants to know if there’s anything that can help them find out who summoned the fire elemental.  Sadly, Al’Nobor has nothing that could help her with that.

He does, however, have an interest in trading druidic spells.  I trade him a scroll of Spiked Stones for one of Creeping Cold.  Woot!  New spells!

I love getting new spells.  As Natalia, I’m as bad about loving to learn new spells as Paige and Lucas in Kelley Armstrong’s Women of the Otherworld series.  (If you’ve never read any of those books, I’d highly recommend it—especially Dimestore Magic and Industrial Magic.  They’re fun.)

Raelan invites both Natalia and Al’Nobor to dinner.  Natalia asks Al’Nobor if he knows anything about Chenestes; particularly, she wants to know what he knows about any connection between Chenestes and undead.  Al’Nobor doesn’t know much, but he does know of a Chenestic sorcerer.  He suggests if Natalia would like more information about Chenestes, she should check with Trevaen, the Wizard of Portals.  Natalia wonders aloud if Julium has considered using a portal to get into Facet to take over—yeah, Natalia’s brain jumps from one subject to another a lot, shut up—but Raelan quickly poo-poos that idea, stating that teleportation doesn’t work there.

Then we start talking about that letter, the one with the symbol, that Jim made as a game-prop, the one that spurred the investigation behind the dragon and the evil myconid drug ring.  I—er, “Natalia”—stayed quiet as Raelan and Al’Nobor discuss the dragon council.  No small feat for Jim, who is role-playing both of them.

If you’ve read any of my other posts (specifically, this one), then you might remember Jim getting frustrated because I didn’t really ask much about the draconic council.  This is where he finally had one of them go, “I don’t think Natalia knows anything about the dragonic council.  Natalia, you can ask questions, you know.”

I don’t think it’s a good thing when the DM all but has a neon sign saying HINT HINT HINT, telling you what you’re supposed to be asking about.

We discuss the dragonic council and their make-up a little bit and decide to head to bed.  (Separately, of course.  Don’t be perverted!)  Before we head to bed, Raelan tells Natalia he’s going to make her a Sure Strike weapon.  WOOT.

Bracell the 13^th

When Natalia wakes up, Raelan is already hard at work at his table, making her weapon.  We’re bored, so I tell Jim that Natalia is going to start investigating the fire elemental crap on her own.  She turns into an eagle again and flies to the area where she had found him.  Once there, she uses a spell to talk to some trees in the area—the ones that aren’t too badly damaged, anyway–to see if they’ve seen anything.  The one she speaks to, of course, can’t give great information because, you know, it was too busy being a tree to be a detective, but it tells her that it saw something short riding in on a lizard spitting fire.  Natalia goes back to Raelan’s to share this information, but he’s too busy to discuss it with Natalia.  You know how guys are when they’re too damned busy playing with their weapons.

And you know why some guys will always be single.

Screw Raelan.  Natalia’s gonna go to Stilldale and see if Julium has any answers.  So she heads that way, hunts him down, and he confirms he’s heard some strange reports.  Julium tells her that caravans from Devies carrying orphans went missing, and another caravan from the south was attacked.  Only one man escaped with his life, and he was burned. 

“The man says it was fire dwarves,” Julium concludes.

“All right!” I say.  Natalia and I are pumped.  We got a witness!  “I’m gonna go talk to him.”

“He cannot be trusted,” Julium says.  “He’s a drunk.”

Drunks can’t be trusted?  Since when?  I mean, sure, not with your drink, but…

Julium interrupts our thoughts, stating that the caravan came from the same direction that the tree said it had seen its fire-breathing lizard with the short rider.  I want to go investigate something, but Julium puts a damper on my fun, telling me/Natalia that he has people looking into it.

“Why don’t you work on your treehouse until Raelan’s done with your scimitar?” he suggests.

Hmph.  Fine.  I’ll go home.

Bracell the 15^th

This is the day that Grugor and Natalia finally FINISH THE TREEHOUSE, BITCHES.  And it’s awesome.  And it’s not a moment too soon.  The night we finish is the night of the undead, and Grugor says it’s not a good night to go out.  Hey, if a bad ass half-orc barbarian is telling me it’s too dangerous to go out, then I’m listening.  If only I had him around that time I got mugged.

At any rate, this is the night those Not-So-Evil-After-All Hobgoblins go around killing undead for their little religious thing they’ve got going on.  The way to prove you’re living is to make goblin lanterns, which Grugor and Natalia do.  (Methinks that Jim lifted a bit from the origins of Halloween traditions, but sometimes, history is a good thing to repeat.)   Jim says that once the two finish their goblin lanterns and set them out, they notice the full, orange moon rising—the Autumn Moon.  Grugor and Natalia climb into the treehouse, roll up the lantern, and play a game of Dead Man’s Bones (or something to that effect) using, yes, bones that Grugor keeps with him.  (Like I asked why he had them.) 

Once during the night, Grugor and Natalia hear a horn nearby.  They see an undead running past her treehouse, with the religious Hobgoblins at its heels.  Grugor explains to Natalia that when these Hobgoblins find an undead, they blow horns before attacking them.

Jim tells me that for the rest of the night, Natalia hears horns blowing all around her at varying distance.  It’s a little disturbing to think about.  Suddenly, dead man’s bones don’t seem so bad.

Bracell the 16^th

Natalia is eager to get this party started.  She turns into an eagle and flies back to Raelan’s.  Once there, Raelan has a surprise for her.  No worries, it’s a non-pervy one, but it’s one very cool although kinda gross.  (Well, if you’re a vegetarian like I am in real life who tends to shy away from animal products.  But my druid doesn’t!)  Anyway, not only did Raelan finish Natalia’s scimitar, he also made her some dragon armor!  Jim describes it as black and badass looking.  Okay, he gave a better description than that, but that’s what I remember him saying.

Now, I might avoid wearing things like leather when I can in real life, but dude.  I think I’d make an exception for dragon.  I mean, there’s bragging rights there, i.e. “I kicked that dragon’s ass so hard, I’m wearing him for a slipper!  Seriously, look, I’m wearing dragon-hide slippers…”

Okay, I didn’t get the slippers, but I’m grateful for the armor because it’s awesome.  It’s lighter than my old armor and way cooler-looking.

Raelan also shows her a brain in a jar that he’s using to…learn stuff, I think.  Hey, it’s been a couple weeks, I barely remember.  I do remember him saying that it was pieces of various brains and that it was evil.  I warn him to be careful, but I’m not too concerned.  For all his goofiness, Raelan’s smart and seems to know what he’s doing.

While all that’s cool—c’mon!  Party to start!  We need to find out who brought the fire elemental before the elves decide that Raelan’s guilty and kill him!  Raelan quickly focuses back on this once Natalia reminds him of this, and he suggests seeing Roan to find out if perhaps an evil cleric of Scorce is in town. 

Natalia doesn’t waste much time.  She transforms back into an eagle and flies back to Stilldale.  During her last trip, Julium had mentioned that people were shying away from her not because she’s a druid—most seem to have gotten over that—but because they thought she was pissed off at them.  He had explained that as the “local witch,” they had expected her to bless the crops on the last holiday, and when she didn’t, they assumed she was angry with the town.  Well, of course Natalia didn’t bless the crops.  She had no idea she was supposed to. 

I’m sorry, Natalia, but your player is retarded and had no idea either.

So Natalia makes sure that she blesses the crops on her way in.  A guard comes over when she’s done and tells her that the Lord Renger wants to talk to her.  She notices the guard still doesn’t look her in the eyes.  Jim told me why, but I can’t remember.  I’m sure he’ll tell you guys why in the comments. 

At any rate, we find Lord Renger.  He tells us of another caravan attack and asks for Natalia’s help.  Hell, yeah.  We check in with Roan, who says she doesn’t know of any evil clerics in town.

And, finally, Natalia gets to get her party started.  Really.  I formed a party with Raelan and Grugor, and we start scouting the road between Stilldale and Devies.  In fact, we did it a couple of times.  But we didn’t find much, the day was over, and we set up camp.  Feeling like mighty big LOSERS, I might add.

Some party.

Bracell the 17^th

We walk all the way to Stilldale, but there’s no encounters.  Zip.  Nada.  Damn it.  We head back out again, sure that we missed something, and yay!  Encounter!  Jim says we see something with different body parts stitched together.

“It’s a flesh gholum,” Raelan yells.  “Attack!”

So we do.  Natalia tries a Flame Strike on it, but it does nothing.  Raelan yells that it has damage reduction.  Well, sure, why not, what doesn’t?  Someone could ass rape some of these NPCs, and they’d never blink an eye.

Beta and Tango manage to get the thing down, although they don’t do any damage to it.  There’s some scuffling, but in the end, it’s Grugor that brings the bastard down.  Which, while good, really doesn’t help us because this thing offers no clues regarding the missing caravans that may or may not be related to what set off the fire elemental in the forest.

Disheartened, we spend the night in Devies.  Natalia tries to do the typical girl thing by consoling herself with shopping.  She goes and looks for wands.  It doesn’t work.  They’re all too damned expensive, so she goes back to the inn, wandless, and tries to not think what Freud would have to say about that.

Bracell the 18^th

Natalia starts the day by casting Greater Magic Fang on both Beta and Tango.  We tend to forget to do that a lot, so I figure if I do it first thing, it can only be a good thing.  I also prep Call Lightning, something else I tend to forget to do.  So now I’m all prepped, pumped, and ready to pummel!  (As Natalia, anyway.  As Spring, I can barely muster the courage to look at another insurance claim sometimes.  Blech.)

Now, I’m glad I did the Boy Scout thing and prepared myself because as soon as I get out of town, something flies through the air and whacks Natalia and she loses 7 points of health.  We turn to see three jet black giants.  What’s with giants and picking on little guys?  These giants must be compensating for the not-so-giant—

Grugor charges.  The Giant Little Pricks start clubbing at him because this is the only thing they can beat.  (Hehehe, god, I’m disgusting sometimes.)  At any rate, we roll for everyone, Beta crits, he manages to trip one, Tango goes in, and we eventually finish them off.

Grugor is the one who points out that these giants are actually just children.  Raelan starts going after the corpses for body parts for his spells because, you know, he’s gross.  After he’s done, Grugor says there’s got to be a lair nearby.  He’s right.  The wolves track for the lair.  We follow them and find a cave.  There is smoke pouring out.  Grugor suggests we get on either side of the cave’s mouth and taunt the giant out.

Hmm, sound suspiciously like how Raelan and I attacked the werewolf all those games ago.  I’d weep, get nostalgic, and sing “Memories” if I was that kind of girl.  But I’m not.  I’m the kind of girl who would wear a dragon for a slipper!  If I wasn’t a vegetarian.  God damn morals.  I hate having standards.

Raelan decides he’s going to be the one taunting out front.  Good call.  Raelan is totally a taunter.  I don’t think that’s a word, but it should be.  At any rate, Grugor whispers some nasty suggestions in Raelan’s ear—not of the 900 number variety, of course, but of what he should yell at the giant the cave—and Grugor takes his place.  Raelan starts yelling his obscenities.

Sure enough, a fire giant comes out and goes straight for Raelan.  Apparently, these things have egos the size of their butts.  Don’t they ever think, hmmm, this could be a trick?  NO.  They do not.  Instead, they charge at a dweeby wizard who is smart enough to put some sort of armor protection on himself.

The giant hits hard enough, though, that even his armor protection spell can’t absorb all the damage.  That’s okay, though.  Because we’re surprising the giant, we get partial actions.  Natalia turns into a tiger.  Her bite misses, but her claws don’t.  And if you have a cat, you know that means a lot.

Raelan takes care of BUSINESS with this giant, and Natalia and Grugor go into the cave to investigate.  They hear something and look around.  Finally, they discover that there are two people in a pit.  We rescue them.  It isn’t too hard to figure out what their near-fate is when we also discover small skulls and partially-eaten children.

The people we have rescued, though, are adults.  Their legs are broken and have gangrene.  They try to tell us what they do know, but it’s not much.  All they can say for sure is that the giant had a visitor that spoke in a squeaky voice.

We take a look around and find some loot—and a letter in Gnomish.  Interesting!  But we have to wait until the next game to find out what it’s all about…

 

Welcome to the shortest installment of “Homebrewed.”  Part 8 is here.  Just to recap where we left off: We killed a dragon that attacked Stilldale.  As much as I’d like to say my Natalia pulled her weight, it was Raelan that really shined.  Natalia cut out from the celebration a little early only to come home and find Sorval, Raelan’s master’s former apprentice, waiting for her.  Sorval cast a spell on Natalia to control her and commanded that she help Sorval kill Raelan.  Oh, joy.

Our ninth D&D game was uncharacteristically short and uneventful, so this entry will be brief.  This is in no way Jim’s fault.  I was having one of those days where I was lethargic and couldn’t focus on anything, and no matter how good a DM Jim is, if your one and only player can’t pull herself together, there’s no salvaging the game.

So we scrapped it and watched TV instead.  But, in keeping up the tradition of posting all the “Homebrewed” sessions, no matter how lame, I will document what happened.

Which, really, wasn’t much of anything.

Bluesky the 21^st

 Natalia wakes up in the morning to find that Sorval is still there.  Before Natalia can say or do anything, Sorval says, “Don’t try anything stupid.”

Are you kidding?  Sorval is a higher-level wizard than Raelan, and I–er, Natalia–just saw Raelan kick a dragon’s ass and is probably now using his hide for a hand puppet.  Like I’m going to take on Sorval myself.

“I’m going to kill Raelan, and you’re going to help me, ” Sorval continues.  “But we need to prepare our spells for the day.  So make your list.  But again, don’t even think about trying anything.”

Before we go on, I have to confirm with Jim a few things about this spell that Sorval has used on Natalia.  Natalia is not like a zombie, unable to think her own thoughts.  She feels compelled to kill Raelan while inflicted by the spell, but she can technically refuse–and suffer damage for it.  I then ask if Sorval is going to watch Natalia set up her spells for the day.  He says we would need to be alone to do this, as it requires concentration, so no–Sorval would not be watching.  Of course, that means I will have no idea what spells she’s setting up either.

That’s all right.  Natalia heads off alone, uses that scroll of Remedy Moderate Wounds to cast it on her spell list.  Then she uses the blank paper from the scroll to scribble a note to Raelan, warning him that she was inflicted by this spell and to be prepared.  Then she casts Animal Messenger and summons a bird to take the message to him.

Once the bird is out of sight, Natalia goes back to Sorval.  Sorval is itching to go.  It takes a good day to get over to Raelan’s on foot, but I’m glad.  This will give Raelan time to get people together.  Jim has me roll for encounters.  We get nothing.  Of course.  Any other time, I would get one, but now that I actually want an encounter, everything just as calm and peaceful as I could ever want.

We finally get to Raelan’s.  If you recall, Raelan has something set up to keep his tower from being seen by anyone else.  Because druids helped him set it up, druids are the only ones who can find his tower.  Don’t ask me how Raelan managed to get help from any druids in this set-up, since Natalia seems to be the only druid who doesn’t hate wizards.

Once Natalia brings Sorval onto the property, she can finally see it.  “This is Raelan’s?” she demands.

“Yes.”

She seems annoyed.  “I’ve come by here many times before.  I command that if you have any kind of buffing spells, you do it now.”

Natalia casted Greater Magic Fang on both Beta and Tango.  I hope they get a chance to use it to bite her in the ass.  I also tell Jim that Natalia would have Call Lightning prepped as well.  She tells Sorval she’s ready.  Sorval orders her to knock on the door.

Natalia knocks.

“I’M NOT TAKING APPRENTICES RIGHT NOW…BUT WHAT I AM DOING IS KICKING YOUR ASS.”

“That’s different,” Natalia says.

And, as you can imagine, we enter combat. 

The door flies open.  Grugor rages and charges at Sorval.  Sorval quickly summons a fire elemental and some frog-looking thing.  She points at us–apparently, now Natalia is included in her minions–and orders us to kill Raelan and all his allies. 

Gulp.  Grugor?  My favorite?  Tear. 

Luckily, I don’t have time to see what the effect the spell is going to have on me.  Roan grabs Natalia’s head from behind–Jim says Natalia has no idea where she came from–and Natalia feels the mind control slipping away from her.  Jim describes it as the spell isn’t quite gone, but Roan has cast some protection from evil spell on Natalia.  Which helps a lot.

Oh, yeah.  That bitch is going down.

The next thing we see is Raelan hovering midair.  Show-off.  He slams some copper tube into the ground, causing the ground to explode in a zig-zag fashion, in between us and going toward Sorval, the fire elemental, and Froggie.

(Froggie went a-courtin’ on a fine spring day, uh-huh…Sorry, good memories with that song.)

Okay.  Back to game.  Sorval and the elemental didn’t get any damage from Raelan’s Zig Zag from Hell, but Froggie…well, no courtin’ for froggie.  No one’s marrying his messed-up ol’ ass now.  Didn’t kill him, but it did make him cranky.

Now it’s Natalia.  I tell Jim I want to do Call Lightning before Sorval figures out some way to get around Roan’s Protection from Evil.  And, you know, Call Lightning has some drawbacks, such as you can’t do it very often, but man, when you can do it, you can do a lot of damage.  I roll and do 41 points of damage.  Sorval manages to do well on her reflex save and takes only half damage.  Still, she’s a wizard, so I know even half damage has gotta hurt.

Julium yells out, demanding the Sorval turn herself in.  Ah, always the protector of justice.  And demanding.  We look up and find Julium standing at a window.  He then jumps down.  It’s quite a jump, but Julium takes it in stride.  We’re impressed.  But that’s where it ends.  Julium attacks Sorval, but it seems like there’s an invisible shield around her.

Grugor attacks again, doing his typical major damage.  Sorval, sensing that maybe this wasn’t the best plan she ever came up with, decides it’s time to pull out the big guns.  She casts a spell, throwing her arms in the air.  Ribbons appear everywhere.  But they’re not happy fun May Day ribbons.  They ribbons that slow us down, burn our skin, and blur our vision.  Natalia take much less damage than everyone else, though, because she has her traveler’s cloak, which has some sort of cold resistance.

Jim says that Froggie is pissed off now.  Not just at us.  At Sorval.  The ribbon-thing is hurting her minions, too.  He opens his mouth and bellows the loudest croak.  Jim says it sounds like a fog horn went off next to our ears.  Both Natalia and Beta fail their fortitude saves, so they are “stunned” by this for two rounds.

Really, if Natalia wasn’t stunned by the sheer volume, wouldn’t she be stunned just at the sheer ridiculousness of this scene?  I mean, really–a fog of ribbons and a croaking frog?

Raelan runs into the fog blindly.  Natalia can’t see anything, but she hears popping noises and screaming.  Roan orders everyone to get out of the fog.  Natalia and Beta, of course, can’t because they’re still stunned, so Grugor grabs Natalia and Julium grabs Beta and they run.  After Natalia and Beta come to, everyone walks around the clouds, waits it out, and checks out the dead Sorval lying on the ground. 

Turns out that Raelan, once again, has delivered the killing blow.  What he did–what Natalia couldn’t see–is that he had run up to her blindly, but Jim had rolled a critical hit for Raelan, so Raelan’s Corrosive Grasp burned his hand right through her face.  The popping noises we heard were her summoned minions disappearing.

And, because we’re disgusting, we loot Sorval’s corpse.  To my surprise, she actually has a druidic spell on her, Infestation of Maggots–a spell Natalia doesn’t know.  But she does now, bitches!

This is where the exciting part ends, by the way.  Jim calls for down time.  It’s much needed but not very exciting.  And what did I do?  Make scrolls.  Hey, there’s no X-Box in this neck of the woods.

Natalia is so bored that she scribes scrolls for 10 days.  True story.  And that brings us to…

Scorici the 1^st – Bracell the 1^st

Grugor comes over to Natalia’s and helps her with her treehouse.  We work like crazy.  Jims tells me that during this time, the Solstice has passed, but since it is a time of work, Natalia doing what she should be, anyway.

On the first of Bracell, Grugor stops his work to tap Natalia on the shoulder.  “Mushroom guy,” he says simply.

Grugor is a man of few words.  More men should be like that.  Okay, I’m full of shit–Jim talks a lot, and I actually enjoy that about him since I tend to be opposite.  But I digress.

Natalia looks down.  It’s one of the myconids she saved in the last game.  Like the new king, this guy is also physically growing into his new role of the circle leader.  She jumps down, allows him to spurt his telepathic spores on her (god, I hope nobody uses that line in a bar) and he “asks” her if she’ll let him and the rest of the circle build their home beneath her treehouse.

I find this confusing.  “Why?” I ask.

He explains that the King wants to divide the circle up and spread them out to several circles, so what happened to them last time won’t happen again.  This makes sense.  I verify with Jim that myconids know what they’re doing when digging around underground, that they won’t make the tree cave in or something.  Jim assures me that as a group of people who live primarily underground, they know their shit, and Natalia knows they know their shit.  In that case, Natalia happily agrees.  She’s rather keep them where she can watch out for them, anyway.

After getting her consent, 20 myconids show up and start working on their new digs.  Four of them, though, come over and help Natalia and Grugor on her treehouse.  They don’t talk much, but I’m assuming that’s their way of saying thanks.

Bracell the 8^th

The day we’ve been waiting for!  Well, I have.  Tango has puppies.  6 of them: 5 girls and 1 boy. 

Bracell the 11^th

While we’re working on the treehouse, Jim says that Natalia hears hooves.  She sneaks off to check it out.  There’s a hobgoblin standing next to his horse, looking at a map, then looking around.  He’s clearly lost.

When Jim asks me what Natalia does, I’m at a loss.  Hobgoblins are evil, aren’t they?  Jim says usually, yes.  Hm, usually.  Makes me wonder.  Also what makes me wonder: This hobgoblin is dressed differently, in bad ass looking black armor with red trim.  I decide to give him a shot and have Natalia ask him what he’s doing.  Turns out this hobgoblin speaks Common, and actually, someone in Stilldale directed him to her.  He’s looking for Vaectorfinyairuxo.  Apparently, Vector (as I’ve taken to calling him, along with Gudger the ranger) has some artifact that he lets the hobgoblins use every year for some ceremony.  They’re part of a religious sect who worships a demi-god that returns to the world once a year.  How do they celebrate?  Killing undead.

Sounds okay to me.  Apparently, Vector has moved since the hobgoblins last talked to him, so Natalia gives him directions to his new place.

After that talk, Natalia decides she needs a break from building the treehouse.  Because she had all the downtime to make scrolls, she had made an extra scroll of Reincarnation that he had asked for, the one he is planning on using to create a spell to cast a fetus from one mother to another.

Gurgor needs a break, too, and decides to go with Natalia.  The very first roll I do, I roll a 1.  Roll for encounter: 36%.  Jim tells me that we’re going along when we see a group of deer.  Beta and Tango start getting all wolfy around them.  They clearly want to attack the deer.  Not because they’re evil or anything.  Because, you know, Beta and Tango are wolves and are getting kind of hungy.

I’m about to let it all happen when Grugor nudges Natalia and points.  It’s a Gray Render.  I had no idea what one looked like, so I looked it up later.  Here’s what I found:

Now, this Gray Render thing is something Natalia would know all about, being a druid.  But Spring here works at an insurance company.  All I know how to do is adjust your claims.  And I’m probably not even doing a great job at that.  So, Jim fills me in on the details: Gray Renders can become devoted to someone, including animals, and will go ballistic if anyone hurts them.  This Gray Render is attached to one of the deer.

I call Beta and Tango back.  We try to back off quietly, so as not to spook the deer and set this thing off.  We roll checks on hide and move silently.

Grugor throws a rock at the Gray Render’s head.

My mouth drops.  “What did you do that for?”

“I was trying to distract it,” says Grugor. 

I must have given Jim a Look because Jim-the-DM explains to me that Grugor rolled a 1 on his check.  Critical Failure.  I have to admit, that’s pretty funny.

Grugor and the Gray Render go at it.  This thing is strong.  It picks Grugor up and tries to tear him into pieces.  Natalia’s Flaming Sphere doesn’t seem to be doing the trick, and the wolves miss when their turn comes.  Finally, Natalia summons a Dire Ape, but it’s unnecessary: Grugor crits and takes out the Gray Render.  I find out the hard way animals don’t disappear right away after you summon them, so I’m left a little bit with a hungry Dire Ape.  I feed him (magically summoned) food from my super awesome traveler’s cloak until he finally disappears.

We keep on to Raelan’s.  We only have one other encounter, and that’s with more hobgoblins dressed like the one Natalia saw earlier.  There’s  a brief exchange, but Natalia leaves them alone.   Natalia finally reaches Raelan’s.  The grass where the fog of ribbon was is now all dead.  I make a mental note to try to fix that with some sort of plant growth spell.  Miracle-Gro can suck it.

And this is pretty much where we ended game: With Natalia giving Raelan the scroll and spilling the beans that Virbéné is the one who told Sorval about the secret to finding Raelan’s–which is how Sorval knew to use Natalia to get to him in the first place.  What a bitch.  Granted, Raelan is right:  Virbéné doesn’t really like wizards to begin with, so she probably only told Sorval to get rid of her.  But Natalia is already making plans for next week, and one of her plans is finding excuses to kill Virbéné and some of the other (asshole) druids of the Circle.  Shouldn’t be too hard.

Hey, a girl’s gotta have goals in life.

Aaaaand…“Homebrewed” is back with part 8, after taking a one-week hiatus, as Jim and I have both been feeling overworked and took a much-needed rest last Sunday.  If you need a recap of part 7, as Jim and I both did, here’s a quick summary: Natalia and Julium went to find out who was involved in the drug smuggling that they believed to be connected the murder of an entire circle of myconids.  During the fight, Beta was killed and resurrected the next day.  Even though Beta is back—albeit in a different color—Natalia is starting to worry that the baddies she’s fighting might be getting too strong and that she’s putting her wolves in too much danger, especially after learning that Tango is pregnant.  Oh, and she touched Raelan’s familiar.  He was totally asking for it.

Bluesky the 18^th

Jim and I got our area prepared like we usually do.  Well, not like how when we first started playing our game.  When we first started, we didn’t have a couch, and our bed was in the living room.  We usually made the bed before we played.  Now that we have a couch, we have a new way of getting ready: Jim usually clears the coffee table and breaks out the battle map, while I go into the kitchen to grab drinks and snacks before heading to the bedroom to get my notebook and grab my dice bag.

This particular week, my dice bag had a nice little surprise in it.  I opened it, spilling on my dice on the table.  If you recall from my very first “Homebrewed” post, my dice are red and translucent.  I found some plain red die 8s in my bag.

“Hey, Jim, you got some of your dice in mine,” I said, pushing the dice toward him.

He glanced at them.  “Those aren’t mine.”

“They have to be,” I said.  “Look, they’re not translucent.  They’re solid red.”

“That’s because they didn’t have any matching translucent ones at the store when I bought them for you earlier this week.”

Aw.  My man went to Castle Perilous, bought me extra die 8s because I had complained that I didn’t have enough, and snuck them into my dice bag.  Isn’t that sweet?  This little surprise came with a nice bit of nostalgia:   The first gift Jim had ever bought me, not even a month into our dating, was my dice bag along with all the dice I would need.

He’s the sweetest.

Onward into the “guts” of our D&D session:  So one game ago—two weeks ago now, if you can remember that far back—Julium had asked Natalia to meet him in Stilldale at noon, Bluesky the 18^th.  And Natalia, being the goodie-goodie two shoes that she is, arrives there promptly.  Again, because her wolves aren’t exactly welcome in town, Natalia leaves them just outside of town and finds Julium in the guardhouse.

Julium seems genuinely pleased to hear that Beta has been resurrected.  He also is pleased to tell Natalia that he has found some information regarding drug ring.  Drugs have been coming into Devies primarily through one man named Krislos.  A couple years ago, he was a low-level thug, but then Krislos branched out on his own and suddenly starting doing very well.  Apparently, someone had contacted him to be someone else’s contact for the whole thing.  Julium says that while nobody in Devies fears Krislos, everyone fears whoever is behind him.

“Here’s where things get tricky,” Julium concludes.  “I have the address.  Do we show up at his place and confront him there or do it elsewhere?”

Well, I don’t go to a lot of sports games—hell, I don’t go to much of anything, as I’m a bit of a homebody—but I do know the power of a little thing called home field advantage.  Natalia quickly rules out going to Krislos’ apartment, but she does agree they should go find him in Devies.  The problem?  Druids are not exactly inconspicuous in this world.  (Remember?  Druids and anything close to nature isn’t trusted in these parts.)  So Julium and Natalia do head to Devies, but once she gets there, Natalia turns into a mutt so as not to draw attention.

Julium and Natalia-the-Dog head to the poorer section of town, complete with strays running around and clothes hanging from lines from windows.  Julium scratches Natalia behind the ears and then points to a door.  Natalia runs over to the door and starts sniffing, while Julium starts asking around about some made-up thing to keep the natives distracted.  Finally, Natalia catches Krislos’ scent and trots back to Julium.  She can tell Krislos has left town, but being in dog-form, cannot convey this information to Julium.  So she just starts jogging away and hopes Julium will figure it  out.

One nice thing about Julium is that he’s really smart.  He doesn’t even seem slightly confused.  Of course, it could be because Spring-the-player is talking all this stuff aloud to Jim-the-DM.  (“ARGH.  Natalia can’t talk!  She’s a DOG, for god’s sake.  Well, Julium is just gonna have to figure it out.”)  Natalia leads Julium to a tavern and paws at the door.  They go up front, make sure nobody is around, and then Natalia pops out of dog-form so that she can talk to Julium.

“We should scope out the place first, see who we’re up against,” she says.  “We don’t want to take on the entire bar.”

Julium agrees.  Natalia pops back into dog form.  Yup, I risked exposure just for that line, and it wasn’t even clever.

We go inside.  I guess the time is before people got all fussy about germs because nobody cares that Julium has a dog with him.  What they are doing, though, is giving Julium wide berth.  Jim explains to me that about 10% of the town’s population is comprised of thieves, and that thief guilds are one of the main employers.  So Julium entering the tavern in officer-type uniform would, naturally, make some people a little nervous.

It isn’t hard to find Krislos.  He’s extravagantly dressed.  I thought Julium would make an attempt to be subtle about what we were looking for, but I don’t think subtly is Julium’s forte, as he just marched right up to Krislos and demanded to know who his contact was.

Krislos, unsurprisingly, isn’t willing to give up that information.  Also not a shocker: He’s quite a dick about it and is patronizing to Julium.  Hm, this guy is awfully cocky for someone alone.  Except he’s not.  Natalia-the-Dog spots two men approaching Julium from behind.  Jim tells me it’s clear to Natalia that these guys are going to jump Julium.

Natalia-the-Dog is not nearly as BA as Natalia-the-CROCODILE!  Yup, we turn into a crocodile.  And, um, suddenly have the whole bar looking at us.  You know, because, apparently, seeing a dog turn into crocodile isn’t something you see every day.  Go figure.

The two men step away from Natalia (“Fuck that, they didn’t sign up to be fighting a crocodile!” Jim says while moving the dice representing their characters on battle map) and attack Julium.  You’d think having a crocodile nearby would have been deterrent enough.  Guess not.  And to Natalia’s surprise, Julium has no idea that the men are nearby, so one of them gets a surprise stab into Julium’s side.

Jim seems surprised that I’m surprised that Julium’s surprised.  It’s shocking all around.  “Well, Spring, his only companion didn’t tell him there were people behind him.  So he was caught flat-footed.”

“How am I supposed to tell him?” I argued back.  “Natalia was a dog!”

“She could have barked or something.”

“Turning into a crocodile wasn’t enough?  That didn’t indicate to him that something was up?”

“Nope.”

Grrr.  I hate you, Jim.

Krislos rolls out of the booth and slashes Julium with a dagger.  Turns out it doesn’t matter that Julium was caught unaware.  He whirlwinds, and unlike the last time he used it, this time, he does some major damage.  At least if you consider killing the two unknown guys in what seems like one fell swoop to be damage.  Death always puts a damper on my day, but hey—maybe I’m special.

I try to do some subdual damage with a massive tail swipe (oh, no, there was nothing Freudian about that comment), but, alas, miss.

At this point, it’s clear that our little bar fight isn’t like the ones on TV where everyone ends up jumping in because they want to be a part of it.  Of course, people on TV usually don’t have a crocodile in the mix.  The people in the bar have wisely cleared out of there.  Krislos, with his two dead buddies and nobody else around to help him, decides now would be a good time to surrender.

So we start getting information out of him:  Krislos doesn’t know who his contact is.  His contact sent minions to get in touch with him.  Furthermore, he can’t tell us more about the minions because they were wearing cloaks.  He assumes they were Zhunese because under the cloaks, the heads were pointed, like whomever was under them were wearing rice hats, like the hats the citizens in Zhun wear; plus, they were short, so he assumes they were either halflings or gnomes. 

He then goes on to show them his drug stash.  He doesn’t know what’s in all of them, but he knows which ones sell best.  Jim rolls a quick check roll for Julium.  He must have rolled well because then, as Julium, he identifies nearly everything in Krislos’ stash.  And then Julium crushes a particularly valuable vial beneath his heel.

Aw, Julium.  You are so cruel.

Krislos tells us that recently, some guys he had sent out made off with his money that was to go to his contact.  Natalia quickly realizes that Krislos is talking about those ogres that had killed Beta—the ones that she let go away with the money.  They were later eaten with the green dragon, Vaectorfinyairuxo, who took the stash for himself.

Anyway, Krislos isn’t stupid.  He knows his contact is going to be mad about not getting that money.  So he sent strangers to the lake on his behalf for the next drop-off.  It’s by a tree, and they should be there any moment.  Julium, true to his word, lets Krislos go after getting the information we needed.  As he’s leaving, Natalia remembers Vector telling her that if she followed the creek to where a conifer is wrapped by a deciduous tree, she would get information about what’s happening to the myconids.  HMMM.

So the two leave Devies and start following the creek called Oxbend.  It takes a little wandering to find this tree (give us a break, it’s not like we had a map for this), but we finally do.  When we arrive, we see a half-ogre in a suit of rusted bandit mail and a gorgeous woman.  They’re meeting with the cloaked minions Krislos had described.  Everyone sees us.

The cloaked figures ready their fists.  The half-ogre see us, glances at the cloaked figures, and yells, “Treachery!”

Oops.  Apparently, each side thinks we’re with the other.  Doesn’t matter that we’re with neither.  We’re in combat.

The cloaked figures go first.  They catch Natalia flat-footed and she gets 2 points of damage.  Jim explains to me that everything feels wrong about them.  They don’t appear strong, but after they do one blow, soon after, it feel like there’s a second one.

“Like a DOT in Warcraft?” I ask.  But I’m just being a brat.  I just like to bring up Warcraft references to annoy Jim.

I succeed.  “NOT like in Warcraft,” he grumbles.

I tell Jim that Natalia is turning back into a crocodile.  She attacks a cloaked figure, snapping one of them in her mouth.  They taste weird, Jim says, like coal, ashes, and fungus.

Everyone else rolls.  Beta kills another little, hooded guy.  Tango rolls a one (critical failure, as I’ve learned) and refuses to attack them—another tip that something is weird about these guys.  Julium kills off the last Hoodie.

The beautiful woman nearby is furious by all this and casts something at Beta.  Jim tells me that I have to make a will save for Beta.  I succeed at the roll, but Jim tells me that Beta yips, as if something is very wrong.

Uh oh.  As usual, the woman is going to turn out to be the scariest of the bunch.

The half-ogre runs in and hit Julium.  Natalia attempts to charge in, but the half-ogre takes an attack of opportunity on her and knocks her back into Beta.  Natalia runs back in and bites.  Beta and Tango have a go at it but both miss.  Julium starts to run in from behind, but the woman casts another spell—and turns Julium into stone.

Shit.  This is not cool.

The half-ogre laughs at Natalia and kicks her back.  Natalia decides to change tactics.  This time, she charges at the woman, bites, and grapples her.  Beta and Tango finish off the half-ogre while Natalia has the woman on the ground.  The woman struggles in Natalia’s grasp, scooting lower, and then reveals a freakin’ snake in her mouth that bites Natalia.  Luckily, I did well on the fort save roll on that one, so Natalia doesn’t suffer any damage from that.  Natalia and the wolves manage to knock the woman out and stop her from bleeding out.  I decided I didn’t want to kill her because she might know more about who is  behind all this turning all this drug/myconid murder stuff.  But she’s scary.  I bind her, gag her, and cover her eyes.  This bitch isn’t gonna do anything.

Unfortunately, my fighter buddy is still stoned.  Literally.  Natalia pads his sword with some  clothing she takes from the dead half-ogre and stuffs Julium in her portable hole.

Not nearly as fun or perverted as it sounds.

Now for a curious part.  Remember in the last game, how Beta was killed and resurrected, and I knew, based on what Jim had told me, that this would mean that something would be “wrong” with him?  Now is where I found out what it was that I had rolled for Beta on that table.  (Which, by the way, is located on Jim’s blog here.)

As soon as Natalia was done looting and stripping the half-ogre, Beta starts rolling over rocks around the half-ogre.

“What’s he doing?” I ask Jim.

“You don’t know.  And neither does Tango.  She’s looking at Beta like he’s gone crazy, too.”

Natalia and Tango watch Beta moving rocks around the half-ogre for a few moments before it dawns on me.  “Beta is burying him?”

Jim laughs.  “That’s what he rolled on the table.  He feels a compulsion to bury the dead.”

“Then why didn’t he bury the little guys?” I ask.

“Because they are not natural.”

And “they,” by the way, are definitely not natural.  They’re also not Zhunese.  The conical shape beneath their hoods were not formed by rice hats but mushroom caps. 

They were myconids.

Evil myconids?  Well, then.  Natalia is gonna need some help.  She dumps a dead evil myconid next to a stoned Julium in her portable hole (sorry, Julium, but them’s the breaks), grabs the bound pretty  woman, and heads to Raelan’s, who doesn’t live too far from here.  Once there, Raelan admits he doesn’t know what the woman is, agrees to help find a way to un-stone Julium, says he’ll get Uliver over to help, and suggests that Natalia stay the night.

Probably hoping she’ll pet his familiar again.  That dirty wizard.

Bluesky the 19^th

Natalia wakes up and heads into the other room.  Raelan and Uliver are already awake.

“A medela!  You brought a MEDELA here!” Raelan says as soon as he sees Natalia.  Raelan apparently has already had his coffee.

Natalia must drink decaf because she asks Uliver, “What’s a medela?”

Uliver explains to Natalia that it’s a priestess who has grossly offended her diety.  He also suggests that she must have been young and not in full control of her powers yet, which is good for us—otherwise, Julium wouldn’t be the only one in a compromising situation.  And by “compromising,” I mean that Raelan and Julium had been using him as a place to put their coffee mugs.  Yes, really. 

Natalia pays Uliver money from the party loot that she got after killing the half-ogre and taking down the medela to use a Break Enchantment spell on Julium.  (The medela, by the way, is now in a dungeon, where Uliver and Raelan plan on using her for potions.  Wizards are really gross.)  Uliver and Raelan take their mugs off Julium.  Uliver casts the spell.  It works. 

Julium comes to.  He gasps.  “That’s a medela!”  He glances around.  “Where am—?  Oh.”

Raelan comes forward.  “By the way…we found this on her.” 

Now, this is the point the game where Jim physically hands me a folded piece of paper.  I look at it.  He has drawn a symbol on the outside of it, clearly meant to be a seal.  “What is this?” I ask.

“It’s a letter.”

“You actually wrote a letter for our game?”  And I don’t know what came over me because I started laughing.  And laughing.  And laughing.  I couldn’t stop.

Jim actually looked a little hurt.  “Why are you laughing?  It’s a game prop.”

I can’t help it.  I didn’t mean to laugh, and I hope I didn’t hurt Jim’s feelings.  It just struck me as so damn funny.  And, also, kind of cute that he can get so into the game as to include a prop.  I open the letter.  (Which, by the way, I’m totally keeping.  I’m also planning on getting Jim some stuff so one day he can make real seals.  Like I said, I found this kind of endearing, and if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.)

Here’s what the letter says:

Krislos:

My shipments to you have, to date, both punctual and potent.   As such, you can imagine my disappointment when my last payment failed to arrive on time.  Aforementioned disappointment was short lived, however.  Now I am merely enraged.

To be blunt, Krislos, you will repay to me every copper lost to this theft…and to guard against a reoccurrence, you will now provide payment for each of your shipments TWO deliveries in advance.

Failure to comply will result in your reassignment from one of our distribution agents, and into, shall we say, the production team.

Ground level production.

The letter was signed with another symbol.

There’s much discussion as to what this symbol represents.  Obviously, it’s a signature, but whose?  Natalia turns into a wolf to see if she can’t catch a scent, but all she smells is Myconids Gone Bad and ammonia.  Which reminds her…she pops out of wolf-form, reaches into her portable hole, and pulls out the evil myconid’s body.  Uliver examines it, talking about a wizard who had mentioned running into “demon mushrooms.”  Raelan also gets excited.  He quickly locates a book and shows it to Natalia.  There’s a picture of an evil-looking mushroom guy with a caption written in Elvish.  Of course, Natalia can’t read Elvish, so Raelan translates for her: “Beware of Mushroostopheles.”

I also find this to be funny but try very hard not to laugh.  Although I think it would have been okay.  Jim seems to find it a little funny, too.

Uliver concludes that the myconids we fought were fiendish myconids.  This explains why they would kill the good myconids rather than eating them or using them to farm mushrooms, since they could do it just as well themselves.

Julium and Natalia agree that given how bad the Myconids Gone Bad smell, they should be able to track them easily and perhaps find where they came from.  So Natalia heals Julium up, thanks Raelan and Uliver for their help, agree to leave him the earrings found off the medela, and head back out toward the twisted tree.

Natalia-the-Wolf, Beta, and Tango all follow the trail down the river.  We find a crappily made raft.  This is where the trail stops.  We cross the river here.  Jim reminds me that we’re now in the dangerous area of the world—the part that Gudger said never to go.  I decide to press on.  We follow the scent into the foothills and into some mountains.  There, we find dead (good) myconid hanging upside down from trees. 

Four of the hanging myconids are still alive, so Natalia cuts them down and heals them up, one by one.  The largest one sprays spores onto her and asks her telepathically why she is helping myconids.  Natalia doesn’t really have a good answer prepared for this, beyond that she doesn’t want this shit going down in her forest.  Once the myconids are satisfied that Natalia truly wants to help, they give her a memory of seeing their king go against Mushroostopheles.  It’s clear their king has no chance against him.

Because we “talked” for too long, we’re spotted by one of the evil myconid and go into combat.   This combat reminds me entirely too much of those martial art films where Jackie Chan is the lone guy in the middle and the bad guys never attack them together (as would be the smart thing to do) but, instead, go at him one-by-one.  That’s because we start with one evil myconid and the others trickle in eventually and—yup—for the most part, attack us one-by-one.  During the combat, Julium and Beta get hit with some Myconid Gone Bad spore-spray.  Gross.  And, apparently, not fun.  Julium and Beta both show signs of hallucinating and Beta even starts attacking Natalia at one point.  Natalia gets annoyed at this point and uses her Plant Dominance feat to sweep some of the myconids under her control.  Unfortunately, this Plant Dominance feat isn’t picky, and it puts some of the good myconids under Natalia’s control as well.  Oops.

Using this, though, she manages to get some of the bad myconids to turn on their bosses that eventually trickle in.  We do a “head” (cap?) count: We’ve had to have taken out the entire ring.  Julium and Beta are still hallucinating.  Julium cries to get the myconid to help cure him.  The good myconid throw something at him, but it doesn’t work.  The evil-but-controlled myconid that’s still alive grudgingly cures Julium at my command.  I then realize that the good myconid are starting to come upon the bad myconid—but he can’t do anything because he’s under my control.

“He’s evil, right?” I ask Jim.

“He’ll always be evil.  No matter what you do.”

“Well, the others are about to kill him.”  I pause.  “I can’t keep him under my control while they’re doing it.  That would be wrong.  He should be able to protect himself.”

Jim seems satisfied with my decision to remove the Plant Dominance from everyone.  The good myconid pummel the evil myconid to death. 

Natalia has barely enough time to heal all injured parties up before they spot Mushroostopheles coming down a winding road from a cave.  The image Jim describes is pretty hideous.  He has a thorny-looking cap.  He has spore-spots on his cap that are actually mouths.  They can all speak, and different languages at that.  Right now, they’re wailing.

We’re quickly back in combat.  Julium charges in, attacks, and we hear a clang as he tries to hit Mushroostopheles.  Quickly, Natalia casts Greater Magic Fang on Beta; both wolves get hit by Giant Angry Mushroom.  Mushroostopheles casts something to make it pitch black around himself.  Natalia turns into a wolf so she can sniff him out.  There’s only a little bit of scuffling before we hear, “Mushroostopheles, you fool.  Drop the darkness.”

And he does.

We hear a voice boom, “Welcome to my home.  You were not invited.”

“And I’m very hurt about that,” Natalia says.  Because, you know, I’m a smart-ass when I’m playing Natalia.

Of course, that is when Jim decides to tell me that I turn around and find that the voice belongs to a black dragon.

The dragon spits black stuff on Mushroostopheles’ cap so that it will spray out like a fountain at all of us.  Beta fails his fortitude save and takes 25 points of damage.

“RUN,” Julium orders.

Good idea.  Natalia turns into a horse, Julium jumps on top of her, and we flee.  Julium is kicking Natalia furiously and guiding her.  The dragons follows above us for a little ways, then looks ahead, and sweeps back around.  Julium rides Natalia-the-Horse back to Stilldale. 

As soon as we get there, he jumps off her, waves his arms, and starts yelling “To arms!  Dragon!  To arms!”  Jim then tells me he starts ordering people around, not noticing me, almost acting as if Natalia really is a horse.

A man comes along and starts leading Natalia toward the stables.  She turns back to her human form and frowns at him.  “Stop that.”

The man looks at her, startled, and then starts making warding signs.  Natalia rolls her eyes.  Meanwhile, people around us are pouring out of the streets, getting ready for a dragon attack.

The Lord Mayor Renger walks towards us.  “Julium, what is the meaning of this?”

“We accidentally stumbled onto a black dragon’s lair.  He chased us, but I started leading him to the waterfall, hoping he had heard the rumors and would turn around.  It worked, but he’ll probably take a detour and be here by tonight.”

“What rumors?” Natalia asks.

“There’s a rumor of another dragon living around the waterfall.  Nobody has seen it, though.”

Oh.  So that’s why the dragon turned around.  Whatever is living in the waterfall scares him.

During all this, Roan has found us.  She suggests we get Raelan, saying that maybe we’d have a chance with him, as dragons at least respect wizards.  She does a Send Message spell and then explains the town’s dragon fighting tactics to Natalia.  Raelan, Uliver, and Grugor appear shortly.  Uliver isn’t sticking around, however, stating that he was just delivering Raelan, and that he lived to become an old wizard by not fighting dragons.

“What about you, Raelan?” Natalia asks.

“Are you kidding?” he says.  “Let’s kill us a dragon!”

Ah, Raelan.  You gotta love his enthusiasm.

Natalia comments on Grugor’s new tattoo on his eye.  The tattoo is from a change in status.  The in-game conversation between Natalia and Grugor briefly turns into a real-life conversation between Spring and Jim about how it makes sense for half-orcs to have tattoos but not so much for bored, white, suburbanites trying to look “punk.”  Thankfully, my guy doesn’t really care much for girls with tattoos, as I’m a girl who probably will never get one.  (No offense to my many friends who have tattoos.  I just hope you like them as much when you’re 70.)

But I digress.  We’re gonna fight a dragon, people!  Although at this point, I didn’t think it was going to happen.  Night falls, and there’s only one light in the town, which is the bonfire in the middle of town.  Natalia and the others are waiting.  Spring, though, is saying aloud, “No way you’re gonna make me fight a dragon, Jim.  Natalia isn’t ready to fight a dragaon.”

Jim hates me, too.  Because he totally is going to make me fight a dragon.  He says we hear its wings beating in the distance.  We see light.  Then we see sparks nearby.  Roan says it’s from the graveyard.  Raelan says that it sounds like the graveyard guardian is fighting.  He had spell-stitched him.

Neither Natalia nor myself knows what that means, but we don’t like what we hear next:  A suggestion that the guardian is fighting Mushroosophecles, who, by the way, can raise the dead.  So we might have to deal with zombies on top of a dragon.  Julium quickly orders Natalia to take someone and go to the graveyard.  Natalia, to Jim surprise, picks Roan.  He thought I’d pick Grugor.

“I love Grugor, but if that mushroom guy has already raised undead or whatever in that graveyard, Roan can do that turn undead thing she does,” I explained.

We head to the graveyard.  Some conscripts go with us.  When we get there, we see Mushroosopheclees laughing.  He’s killed the graveyard guardian.  Damn.  He sprays some horrible stuff at us, and the conscripts immediately start vomiting up their internal organs.

Um.  I think I’d rather fight the dragon.

Natalia tries doing Plant Dominance on Big Angry Mushroom, but she quickly learns that it doesn’t work on everyone.  It doesn’t do a damn thing to Mushroosophecles but piss him off.  His mouths are all yelling in different languages.  Jim tells me that Natalia does understand what the ones speaking Common and Druidic are saying: You dare seek to control Mushroosophecles?  I am not of this world!

Roan tries to hit him and misses.  Natalia does Flamestrike.  Mushroosophecles does appear to have some fire resistance, but since it’s not just natural fire in that spell, it does do some damage.  When it’s her turn, Natalia will also do Call Lightening.  (Unfortunately, Jim and I realized after I prepared my spell list that Call Lightening takes some time to prep.  So Jim allowed a little rewind in time, stating that while Spring-the-Player didn’t know this, Natalia-the-Druid would have and probably would have prepped it on the way to the graveyard.  He swears this isn’t a pass he’s giving to me as his girlfriend, but a pass he’s giving to me as a new player for not knowing her spells that well yet.)

At any rate, Call Lightening is cool.  It took out of chunk of Big Angry Mushroom’s back.  Beta and Tango did the rest.

The conscripts are cussing us out.  Some are dying; others are already dead.  There’s nothing we can do about it.  The ones that are still alive are cussing us out between vomiting their internal organs.  Roan snaps one’s neck, trying to show some mercy.  We run back into town.

Stilldale is a wreck.  Kobolds, orcs, and bugbears have decides to take advantage of the chaos in town and are attacking as well.  Jim says it suddenly occurs to Natalia why Vector wanted her to investigate the drug ring and the death of the myconids:  If there was a new, young dragon sniffing around your territory, wouldn’t you just send others to do your dirty work and kill him for you?

The black dragon is already in town.  As soon as Natalia gets there, he sprays that black stuff.  Natalia and her wolves all fail their will saves, and, just like they were with Vector, they’re shaken by this dragon.  That means -2 to any attack, damage, and saving throws.

Oh, yeah.  We’re gonna die.

Everyone else, though, seems okay.  Grugor rages and attacks.  Julium does his “Imperial Rex!” yell and also jumps in.  Roan tries but misses.  Raelan does something that looks like his attacks were sped up and casts fireball spells.  Around us, the townspeople are letting loose arrows that, quite frankly, aren’t doing a damned thing.

Natalia tries to run in and help.  Beta and Tango attack, but Beta misses, and the dragon sends Tango flying backwards, hurting her badly.

“You dare challenge Vuthalitrix?” the dragon hisses.

“Challenge you?” Raelan yells.  “I’m gonna make a rug out of you!”  He then spins his wand and thrust it into a ground.  The ground explodes into an S-shape underneath the dragon.

Remind me not to piss off a wizard.

This does piss the dragon off, though.  He rears up on his hind legs and spews more of that black stuff.  This knocks Beta out.  Tango is dangerously low on health.  Jim reminds me out-of-character that if Tango dies and resurrected, her pups won’t come back.

I’ve already figured this out.  Natalia orders Tango away, cursing herself for brining a pregnant wolf into this mix.  Natalia is also low on hit points now.  The only one who doesn’t seem to take any damage from anything this dragon throws is Raelan, who, incidentally, seems awfully smug about this fact.

Natalia runs to Beta, heals him up, and has him back off as well.  Too bad—the wolves are a good chunk of Natalia’s fighting abilities, but she doesn’t want to lose them.  I might have to seriously think about giving Beta and Tango some time off until Tango has their babies.

At this point, it seems like the fight is really between Raelan and the dragon.  Raelan seems to be the only one who seems to do much damage to this dragon.  “I’m going to devour you,” says Vuthalitrix.

“Your mother was an iguana,” Raelan shoots back.

Everyone keeps trying to fight the dragon.  Natalia heals Beta up some more on her turn and sends him back in.  He gets hit and loses a lot of points again, though.  Raelan runs in, catches his hands on fire, and touches the dragon, engulfing him in flames.  The dragon swings at Raelan, managing to actually rip his robe.  Then the dragon laughs.

“A stoneskin spell?”   Vuthalitrix says.  “I’m gonna eat you alive.”

Since the fire spells Raelan’s throwing at the dragon seem to be doing well, Natalia tries to do a Flaming Sphere, but she cannot overcome the dragon’s spell resistance and blows the spell.

Raelan tries doing the fiery hand thing again, but Jim rolled two 1s in a row, so he failed.   The dragon swipes his tail.  We hear it break Raelan’s arm, and he goes flying backwards.

Roan runs in and heals Beta up a bit.  The dragon turns around and does the black spit thing again.  Roan is the only one who makes her save now.  Because Natalia has been trying to keep her wolves from dying, her heals were used on the wolves rather than herself.  And she’s already low on hit points.

So Natalia is killed by the black spit.  What a way to go.  Almost as bad as those people who drowned in molassas.

Beta’s druid is down, so he’s going after the dragon, but he keeps missing.  Raelan gets up, shakes himself off—his arm is very clearly broken—and fires Magic Missles at the dragon.  Roan then resurrects Natalia with a spell called Last Breath.

The dragon is dangerously low on hit points himself.  He stumbles around, then gets up, and starts flying away.  Raeland then yells for everyone to watch why you don’t piss off a wizard—and fires a spell that knocks the dragon out of the sky.

Everyone starts cheering.  The dragon is dead.  The townspeople run over to the body and bring it back to Raelan.  “I did it!” he said.  “I killed the dragon!”  With that, the townspeople cut open the dragon’s body and hand the heart to Raelan.  To Natalia’s disgust, Raelan eats it.

Remember Allista, the psionic daughter of the Lord Renger?  She apparently is standing behind Natalia, so she “hears” Natalia’s thoughts and knows that Natalia left home before learning all the customs.  “It’s tradition,” she explains out of what seems nowhere.  “Whoever gives the killing blow eats the heart.  It gives you strength.  From what I understand, it’s not just a rumor, either.  But if you eat it when you haven’t given the killing blow to the dragon, it’s poison.”

“Well, good for Raelan, then,” says Natalia.  “That can only help him.  But it’s still disgusting.”

“My father ate one when he was younger.  He said it was the most delicious thing he had ever eaten,” Allista says.

The Lord Mayor Renger killed a dragon?  That old man?  The one who ran and hid.

She shrugs.  “He wasn’t always like that.”

Jim now announces that I have to roll on the Come Back Wrong table, to see how bad I’m messed up from dying.  I roll a 24%.  Jim looks at the table and starts laughing.  “You know how things just work out perfectly?”  he asks.

“Yes?”  I’m confused.

“Okay,” he says.  “Natalia is now reflecting on being dead.  And while you’re reflecting on this, you’re getting angry.  You realize that if the elves had been doing their jobs, you wouldn’t have had to die.  Furthermore, they’re letting the dragons kill the myconids instead of taking care of it like they were supposed to.  You’re now distrustful of elves.”

I laugh.  We all know how I already didn’t like the elves in Jim’s world.  “Seriously?  That’s what I rolled on the table?”

“The one where you become distrustful of another race?  Yes.  Is that not perfect?”

I have to agree.

Raelan tells everyone that we need to get some sleep and collect the dragon’s loot in the morning.

Bluesky the 20^th

The next morning, everyone heads toward the dragon’s lair.  To my surprise, we find the myconids there, including one of them that I thought I had died in our battle together.  Jim explains to me that I can see that he’s misshapen, and as a druid, Natalia knows that he’s physically growing to become the new king.  He’s got the demonic myconid caps hanging from the trees.  He sprays Natalia with spores.  She allows him to talk to her telepathically.

“The cave belongs to myconids!” he tells her.

“Uh, no,” she says back.

Julium steps up, announcing that we were the ones who killed the dragon, and that the treasure belongs to the people of Stilldale.  The King-to-Be Myconid thinks about it, then agrees—treasure belongs to the people, but the cave is for the myconids.  We’re not about to argue.

He will only let Natalia and Grugor in.  Not surprising, since we’re the “nature” people of the bunch.  We go in, grab the treasure and the dragon eggs that Grugor thinks Raelan will like.  We leave and divvy up the treasure.  Natalia is excited that she got a scroll Remedy Moderate Wounds.  This isn’t a spell that she’s ever known before, but it’s a druidic spell, her level, which means that she has now learned it from the scroll.  Jim says it’s better than some of the other healing spell Natalia currently has.  Yay!

Grugor feels drawn to a sword that, oddly, Roan and Julium seem put off by.  Jim tells me out-of-game something that Natalia will probably not come out in the game: The sword is a sentient weapon with chaotic-neutral alignment.  That would explain why Roan and Julium (lawful alignment) wouldn’t want it and Grugor (chaotic good alignment) would feel drawn to it.

Everyone goes back to town.  There’s a huge party.  Everyone has heard how Raelan pretty much is the one who defeated the dragon.  Suddenly, girls seem to be paying attention to him.  Natalia stays for a bit, but my druid is much like myself and can only take so much party before heading home.

So Natalia heads home.  Now, I haven’t had to roll for any encounters around the (half-built) tree house because Natalia cleared out most of the uglies a long time ago.  So when Jim announces that I have to throw a will save, I’m confused, but I oblige.

And fail it.

Jim announces that I get to my tree house and get a weird feeling that something is trying to control my mind, which, obviously, works because I failed my will save.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” a voice says.  Natalia looks around to find out who it is.

Sorval steps out from behind a tree.  “I’m going to kill Raelan—and you’re going to help me.”

Dum dum DUM.