Sunday, June 25, 2017

Bog Butter And Fog And Witches

Started a new campaign with a whole new cast, first adventure

CAST

Anachronia Stensdottir, hard-of-hearing soon-to-be merchant seeking adventure.
Mercy Babylon, Gucchi layabout with prices of sex acts tattooed on her chest.
Agnes Hadlow, ambiguously human bog mummy who makes newspapers for swamp hags.
Prunes Holzbuck, tiny cursed person tied to a tortoise.

The premise begins with the party gathered together on a carriage headed to Flan on the Moonsea. To get there, the party had to travel through the Quivering Forest.

Mercy, Agnes, and Ana all split the original bill, while Agnes hid herself on the roof amongst all the luggage for a nap during the journey. During the journey, strange fog began to manifest heavily, knee-deep on the road and thicker beyond the forest's treeline.

There is a wreckage of horses as the coachman flees suddenly, gasping a half-heard name: ‘Alya' and running off before the party can respond. From this impact, Agnes is thrown from her perch among the luggage, and the full party meets each other properly for the first time.

Prunes thinks Agnes smells terrible, Agnes has no idea who anybody else is, Mercy is ticked because the impact interrupted her own nap. As both Prunes and Agnes are druids, the former's turtle is questioned but gives no answers. Agnes pulls the head off of the ruined pile of dead horse wrapped around the tree it ran into. Everyone is surrounded by the thick fog, with dim lights in the distance and a slow, single drumbeat from the same direction.

Ana goes towards the lights—revealed to be an octagonal roadhouse—bangs on the door, asks for adventure from the bald woman who answers.

Agnes is going the club-against-palm thing and freaks out the owner Rum who closes the door in their face. Agnes then poisons the door and feigns danger to get everyone inside. The inn is full of people, Rum the owner, and Milos the drummer. Mercy buys some good brandy, Agnes tries to fill the horse head with more blood, which makes everyone present very uncomfortable. Rum is annoyed by the drumming but Milos—he counters that with how he wants his funeral drumming to be perfect, Rum counters that 'he' isn’t dead yet. Agnes offers to help the boy—her brother—after it’s admitted he’s cursed:
Medicine reveals his pupils are huge, his blood smells sweet, his breathing is slow
Arcana reveals he isn’t cursed
Detect disease and poison reveals he is drugged to fuck

Rum conflates this with the story of Jaegers who hung around and then disappeared, goes to her basement, finds out one of them stole her curative herbs and probably drugged her brother when escaping Party takes on the job of tracking them down—while also looking for their coachman—for preserves, free food, and a ride to Flan.

The part then rushed in to the forest, met and yelled at some squirrels about a nasty boy, got revealed that someone shiny and clattering passed through the forest before them. They fed the squirrels horse meat and promised they would feed the Jaeger to the squirrels when they find him.

Ana found clear marks on the roots that could be seen, and a solid gold button. Prunes was pissed about this, tried to steal it multiple times. The failures of a solid-gold currency were discussed.

Party came to a brook that had an excess of fog coming off of it, almost like a wall, used destroy water to make a pass through the wall and saw that the whole underbrush was rotting—also more buttons where found, by Agnes this time. Prunes pick pocketed one of them.

Came into a clearing with a big dog. Ana has never seen a dog before and was afraid. Dogs are hungry. Dog owners were ghillie suit elves who demanded they drop their weapons since the party are intruders/poachers. Agnes couldn't see them and thought there were only ghosts, Ana couldn't hear them, Prunes could see every pore

There was debate on why they were armed, elves get suspicious and claim the party are intruders, poachers, but Agnes says they're hunting the most dangerous game—MAN—and ask if he was seen before. Promises not to kill animals even though no one's dropping their weapons. Elves say yes and indicate where, then leave.

Party takes left fork through the rotten forest and comes to a sunnier glade. Jenny Greenteeth is there, a pleasant old woman, who mentions how new people are showing up every day.

Everyone introduces themselves. It is revealed that the party is going to kill a drug dealer, get asked if they're murderers—this is met by lots of protestations, then an 'eh not yet' kinda vibe. Mention he's a poisoner, Greenteeth reveals that the twisted person she's using as a walking stick is that poisoner, who tried to kill her with poisoned tea. Party only really cares about the curative, Ana wants the button-filled jacket. Jenny says that she can't just give the party the rare herbs, offers a choice: get rid of the elves who have been tracking them—accusations of racism—or come under her service for a while as emissaries. After making sure she's not trying to enslave them, most party takes the offer and gets witch-mark moles on their faces with the exception of Mercy.

Everyone goes back to Jenny's underlake cave hut, get the curatives, and see Jenny doing a polymorph on the Jaeger. Fifteen seconds of screaming ensue; Agnes says ‘nothing will be okay’ to the Jaeger. He's very fast and very dextrous though, and jumps free, knocks over the cauldron and breaks an Ana-Agnes clothesline. Ana tries to tackle him but fails.

Jenny is very angry about this, swears a lot but admits it's her fault, says a night run is always good for women her age. Everyone goes outside after making sure the moles won't vibrate as a sign. Agnes makes sure the marks will only hurt them if they defy Jenny. Talk about whether or not everyone joined a cult, Agnes specifies it’s a coven.

They go back to the inn with curatives! Offer bog butter to the ghillie elves, who in turn offer it to their dogs and it's good. Everyone gets back to Rum, give her the curatives to great relief and feelings of accomplishment.

Talk about clotheslining and Milos offers an arm wrestling contest because he can't do a funeral dirge anymore, is bored, and sees Ana as a martial type. Another dude named Clardic Fug gets in on the stuff and sets up a little betting tournament between the three.
Mystery box(one button) waged against Milos' drums (heavily overpriced), and Ana loses after doing a last-minute dramatic arm hold.
We discuss the value of a gold economy.
Clardic Fug starts off strong but has no staying power. Button, almonds, and horse head waged against cache of stuff. Ana wins!

Party checks up on Rum, gets told the poultice will take all night to make so she can take them to Flan in the morning. They forgot about their coachman though, but shrug it off. They divvy up Fug's cache, full of nice clothing and antitoxin. There's a bit of argument about that, saying the whole adventure was kinda pointless if he had this all along—Fug explains it wouldn't make Rum's brother any less high, and might fuck him up more.

Agnes decides to make horsehead jerky overnight, and dozes in her sleep. Mercy however is awoken by someone tapping at her shoulder, and whispering into her ear. It's the Jaeger from before, slashed up and panicked, begging Mercy to not tell anyone that he is hiding there because she's the most reasonable one, the one who didn't take a contract with Jenny. For some reason, Jenny isn't allowed to enter the inn without permission.

Mercy agrees on receiving his coat, and gets it. She models it for a bit but finds it uncomfortable, so packs it away along with the gown she received.

Then there is banging at the door, waking everyone up. There is much banging of heads on tables, or falling off things. It's Jenny, asking if anyone had seen a man she's looking for. Mercy tries to ward this off but Agnes thinks she's so wrong she doesn't even know she's wrong. The Jaeger didn't hide his footprints very well, which lead to the cellar doors.

Agnes and Prunes both imitate the Jager tone of voice and deep pitch to get their quarry to poke his head out; it works, and he freaks before getting Charmed by Agnes. There is questioning about his motives, his goals, and in short:
1. He wanted to ensure safety for his unit, because they're not safe in Flan or in the woods, and Jenny is powerful
2. He is the poisoner of the unit, and needed a bargaining chip to ensure he got a fair deal from Jenny
3. The tactician of his unit, Sibil, claimed to see the future and terrible figures in the mist

Agnes has him strip of all his equipment, and sets Jenny upon him. The screams of being polymorphed into a walking stick draw everyone around, and Agnes is smiling so widely and so horribly at everyone. Jenny emerges with her quarry and everyone is horrified. Jenny says that Rum shouldn't dig too deeply under her basement floor, there's bad things there.

The party gathered their things and gets on the Flan with Rum as driver, getting collectively high on the hashish, stunning narcotic, and some kind of amphetamine the Jaeger had on his person. Rum sits by the roadside and gets blackout drunk.

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