Episode Three

Of course we began by giving B a hard time about not being there last week.

DM: Oh, that's right! How much gold does he have left after the whores from last week? And by the way, NOW would be a good time to declare VD to be your favored enemy.
B: Whores?! I clearly said I was going camping all weekend.
T: Oh, you pitched a few tents.
Me: That reminds me, halcyon_vitriol and I were discussing the matter of your favored enemy, and he had some suggestions for what would be useful. For example, undead...
B: I don't know if that really fits with my character. I mean, he's out in the woods, I'm not really sure that he's run into that many undead.
Me: Ok, well, why don't I show you the list of creature categories, and you can look at what falls into each of those categories, and then you can tell me what fits into your character instead of what would be USEFUL TO THE PARTY.

Then we gave E a hard time for various speeches she's given in the past week about how we need to be more paranoid, and how we need to question the townspeople and find out who's running the town and can Ray cast Detect Evil on Elena and wacka wacka wacka.

T: It's called, 'Dungeons and Dragons!' Not, 'Sneaking and Politics!'

When we finally got down to business, we determined that I was going to spend a few more minutes with the cleric and Ray and Mothra were going to see if Tess knew anything.


Wizardess' House

There was a fox sitting perfectly still outside, cutely, with a message tied to its back. Apparently the fox is Ray's greatest weakness, and whenever he encounters one he turns into a fourteen-year-old girl.

DM: It's sitting outside, perfectly still...
T: starts to look sad
DM: It's not dead! It's just perfectly still!
B: How did it die?!

Ray and Lepidoptera talked to Tess, who handed them the note. At this point, DM says (in Tess' voice), "You guys may want to take a look at this!" and T says, "HOLY SHIT! YOU HAVE PROPS!" because DM had, at some point during the week, gotten bored enough in class that he wrote out a real encoded note that needed decoding. Fuck! And our tangentially involved friend A missed it! It was also- I cannot describe the faces DM made while T and E were decoding the message. It was a combination of glee, pure joy, and true evil genius. In the four years I've known him, I've never seen him look so happy, even after drinking an entire bottle of white wine.

Anyway, the note was from the kobold leader, and was instructing the kobolds in the woods to return to the gorge, and watch out for traps. I should note, that at this point, DM is *very( insistent that there will be *no* hand-holding this week and we will have to figure things out for ourselves. So, the party jaunts off to...


The Forest

Where we have a one and a half hour clusterfuck.

Oh, the battle was easy enough. We found their camp in a clearing, and having learned the benefits of the surprise round from level 1.2, pretty much slaughtered the bunch. Of course, all the while, Mothra is trying to ensure that we keep one alive to interrogate. Because interrogation has gone so well for us in the past. Totally useful information obtained from both kobolds and troglodytes. Anyway! We capture it, tie it up, and I intimidate it. We try a couple of different tactics, like threatening it, pretending we've joined its side... but all it will tell us is that humans have stolen its lands. Ray does offer it some pox-covered blankets, but it is not interested. Forn and Lepidoptera have a conversation in which they *acutally* consider waterboarding the kobold and the DM threatens to change their alignment. Finally we have a second clusterfuck with a kobold archer that we also capture (and also consider waterboarding- hey they're terrorists, so it's not torture!), but who (thank god) yells to its compatriots to flee. We get a clue, and follow them into the western hills.

At this point, I get a cookie, and boggit encourages me to follow social norms by offering one to our guest (B). He asks if there's any milk, which DM offers with the condition that he pour it into a glass. We all think this is hilarious, but he seems a bit offended and asks, "What?! Is it because I'm a straight dude?!" No, I say, as the rest of them point at me. It's because I'm a disgusting human being (because usually I have a gallon jug of cider in T and DM's fridge that I swig from).


Near the Gorge

So, the description of the gorge is not something I remember very clearly, but was also not something halcyon_vitriol had clear memories of writing. Apparently when he was writing up this part of the adventure, he was was feeling rather feverish and reading a lot of Native American case law. So... the descriptions from here on in are rather *faaaaabulous*. Basically there's a tower by the gorge. We go to check it out, and we all fail our Climb checks, and then a kobold sticks its head out the window and starts shooting at us. So, in the end it is determined that, since it's only 20 feet in the air, that Bogdina is going to throw the halfling through the window.

DM's comment: You are going to treat her if she were a weapon with which you are not proficient.

I thought that this was one of *the* most hilarious things said.

I throw the halfling through the window. She makes it but lands hard. Kills the kobold in the room. Tosses a rope down, we climb up, there's nothing in the tower.

Ray: Can I pee out the window?
DM: Roll it.
*16*
DM: Success! Ray pees out the window... and it hits a fox!

We dick around in the tower some more, and then dick around near the gorge some more. DM is starting to looks a mite peevish. "OMG. You haven't even gotten to the dire weasel yet."

So... into the gorge. We walk... carefully... down the path. We come to the part where the traps have *obviously* been set out. Lepidoptera doesn't search for traps, somehow, so she and I crawl on our bellies and I almost fall into a pit. There are two areas with traps, and for some reason, in the second area the three of them are dickering and I get impatient and crawl through it. Mothra wants to be uber-careful and shit, and I'm like, it's a 10-foot pit. I can fucking climb out. Not that big a deal! So of course I immediately trigger the 20 foot pit that contains the dire weasel.

Me: What does it look like?
DM: It looks like something trying to climb out of the hole!
T: Can Bogdina stonecunning the weasel?!
DM: It is exactly 20 feet underground!
Me: I wanna pet the weasel!
T to DM: I wanna pet your weasel!
DM blushing furiously: That provokes an attack of opportunity!

So, anyway, we get through the weasels with Forn's wild empathy and some bungling, aaaand... Lepidoptera wants to set up camp. Because Ray is out of spells. And surely we're in no danger...

Forn scouts ahead, and comes to a valley, where there are 50 *visible* kobolds, and there's this deeply, deeply awesome description of other things that Forn sees, like kobolds watching some sort of gladiatorial battle in the center of the town/settlement/whatever, but which we don't get to hear all of because DM got embarrassed by what he'd written (seriously, I wish he'd finished because it was so fucking hilarious). T does ask if any kobolds are weaving or making lanyards, and DM mentions that we can see some of them, "peacefully planting corn and going about their native way of life... or as they call it, maize!" Boggit makes a face. "Just kidding! They're wielding spears and practicing melee techniques!" Boggit says, "The other one wounded more!"

Right. Crap. 50 kobolds. There's no way we can get them all (though I point out that DM has a very limited number of tokens so we can't be attacked by more than 8 at any one time). But then!

DM: Lepidoptera, you hear something.
fspider: I do?!
DM: Yes, and you can see flickering torchlight...
Me: Crap! What is it?! It can't be kobolds- they have darkvision, so they wouldn't be carrying torches!
DM: I mean, you see nothing! Never mind!

Anyway, then two kobolds riding weasels show up with six buddies, blocking the way back.

We attempt to fight them as they throw Dancing Lights into the air and kobold tokens keep appearing out of nowhere. One of them says, "So are you going to surrender, or what?" Ray mentions that if we surrender they'll take our weapons, so we continue to try to fight. A dire weasel runs to the camp and brings back someone with some authority. We still attempt to fight, and consider a) running back out the way we came in and b) throwing the halfling over and past the kobolds blocking the entrance. The kobold/DM says, "I DON'T KNOW HOW TO MAKE THIS ANY CLEARER. IF YOU DON'T SURRENDER YOU'RE GOING TO DIE." (note: I didn't actually think that surrender sounded like a bad option until Ray said the thing about them taking our stuff. I had *just* paid 320 gp for the damn thing and was SO not giving it up...)

So we're brought to a kobold who's in the gladiator ring Forn saw earlier, and DM gives the description of him and I say, "So, he's basically got a sign on his forehead that says, 'Boss,' right?"



Shrakk: You've killed our people everywhere, so now, in front of all my people, I am going to take care of this personally well, not personally since I have some assistants... where are my tokens?... WE are going to take care of this personally!

So... Lepidoptera take a shot with her bow, rolls a 4, and hits a kobold child in the forehead... dealing lethal damage.

Nice.

So, some cool stuff happens, like one of the kobolds casts a spell that doubles the size of Shrakk, and I manage *not* to score a critical hit on the leader, for once, and fspider reminds me to fly into a rage before I take my first turn. My favorite part, of course, is when I deal like 10 points of damage to the leader who's down to 1 hp, and I actually get to *hear* the death speech (DM was *extremely* reluctant to read the slightly dramatic monologue that he wrote while under the influence of drugs and micro-organisms. I had to *beg* him to read it to me, but it was totally perfect.)

Shrakk's dying words? "You stole our lands, violated our dead, and now you've invaded our capital city. Congratulations. You're monsters."

HELL YEAH. The two good characters- Forn and Mothra- felt *SO* bad that they didn't want to take the loot in Shrakk's tent "just in case the kobolds came back." Ray and I discovered 580 gp and DM was VERY SPECIFIC that these goods WERE NOT MADE BY KOBOLDS so we convinced them that these were stolen goods and we should sell them. Then Forn was dead set on searching the town for the merchants who'd lost their wares until DM reassured us that there were NO SURVIVORS from any of the kobold raids on the caravans.

Oh, and in classic style, as soon as Shrakk kicks it, Mothra starts going on about can we heal it and is it really dead and maybe we should interrogate it and the DM is insisting that it's really, really dead and it only had one hit point when I hit it for 10 points of damage with my axe in a rage and I ask, "How did the kobold die?"

Oh, and then we caught a villager to ask it some questions, and I tried to pet it soothingly but was still in a rage so THAT was kind of hilarious, and the random villager *ACTUALLY* had some information, which was a completely new turn of events. So, yeah. Some dudes in black cloaks apparently turning a lot of kobolds into undead.


Back in Town

So, back in town, we go to the tavern and everyone fails a Gather Information check. I go to the chapel and fail a Charisma check in the evening, then get up in the morning to go to services and fail another one. Oops. Now Elena is wary of me. Finally Mothra gets it out of someone that there are sketchy characters lurking on the outskirts of town. The rumor is repeated by Tess (though she had the same unreliable source- drunken tavern patrons). She gives us some grow and shrink potions. Her buddy, the druid, shows up and shenanigans ensue. Basically, Ray tries to exchange sexual favors for a pet fox (and somewhere around this time Viraa claims to have been thrown out of Elven society, to which Bogdina says, "Really?!" No, not really.) I blithely ignore all of his hints ("Is there ANYTHING else anyone wants?!") until someone else helps me out ("Oh! There are freshwater crabs?!" and an exchange about crabs and gills that ends with the DM saying indignantly, "Do you think that I didn't look up crustaceans online just for her?!") Forn and I are very excited to learn that there are Fey creatures in the Elderbark Forest, though when I tried to inquire further Viraa seemed a little vague on the details. When pressed, he said that the Fey creatures made him feel uncomfortable. I looked at him and said, "But why?" thought about it, and said, "Ooooohh, no, I totally understand. I feel the same way about that one!" and pointed at Ray.

So. Our princess is in another castle! And Mothra and I might be in Portland next weekend, so if we do D&D it'll be Sunday night instead of Saturday, but! I'm very much looking forward to fucking up 2.1, so... onward!