Author: Blameless

Rooster interrupts some prime ukulele strumming to summon Silly Lilly, Blameless, Pan, Uke, Fin, and Huck to his office. It seems that the villagers of Blamboof, R&S’s newest client, have been displaced from their farms by forces unknown, their crops ruined. R&S must conduct a relief mission to deliver supplies and resolve the cause of the crisis. Due to the bulk and weight of relief supplies, and not the mission’s urgency, the operatives will take the slow moving Train Of Regional Transport, Ox-Impelled Services Extender (TURTLE).

Epi Glottis pilots the TURTLE to a camp city upon the hills overlooking Blamboof valley. The relief team is met by farmer Blarfmoo who directs the unloading of supplies.

The trouble with the farms, explains Blarfmoo, started when a tremor coughed up a big purple pod. After that, the vines spread rapidly, drinking up the river, smothering the crops, and forcing people out of their homes.

Honestly, weeding out a plant seems like a cakewalk of a mission despite Blarfmoo’s arbitrary prohibition against simply burning the entire village to the ground, vines, houses, and all. Uke flies off to get a sky view of the situation, hoping to discover and perchance longbow the pesky purple pod in the middle of the mess and call it a day. Instead, three flying thorn men intercept her at the edge of the vine wall and launch salvos of ouchy thorns. Uke retreats to the party dashing up to help her.

The regrouped party pushes into the viney maze through an obviously safe opening. The walls are otherwise impassible, Silly Lilly points out, because this razor vine, indigenous to jungle climes, will certainly injure anyone misfortunately entangled. She confirms that finding and destroying the central heart pod is the key to success. Pan casts locate plant to learn the direction of the pod.

As they make their way in the pod’s direction, Blameless spots the tracks where the three thorn men landed here and melded into the vine walls. Fin’s danger sense informs her something isn’t quite right, confirmed when the three thorn men re-emerge and attack Pan and Fin. The party deals with them quickly enough and Silly Lilly sifts through their remains, determining they are winged needle blights who likely came along to make the new vine city their comfy home.

Pan guides them to the next clearing where a scarecrow hangs from a crossbar right in the center. Uke, an aarakocra, is impressively unafraid of the scarecrow until it detaches from the crossbar and, fixing its glowing red eyes on her, attacks with metal claws. The scarecrow frightens her profoundly. The rest of the group surrounds the scarecrow and dices it up, avenging Uke’s broken psyche. What little coherent scarecrow remains burns down from Silly Lilly’s firebolt.

Uke remains inconsolable, no longer in fighting condition.

Fin exuberantly runs into the next clearing, bolstered by the previous successes and looking for some action. This time four winged needle blights are joined by a pair of vine blights who entwine Fin. Her cohorts concentrate on breaking the hold of the vine blights, despite their warning that the adventurers are trespassing on the vine people’s claimed land. In answer, Blameless hurls a pair of fiery chromatic orbs that burn down one of Fin’s vine blight captors and injure the other. A follow-up chromatic orb finishes of the second vine blight while Pan sleeps out the winged needle blights until they can all be slain in turn.

Pan charges into the next room where he has difficulty seeing the giant, hideous, pulsating, purple pod because of the nine scarecrows guarding around it. The scarecrows charge, frightening and paralyzing Blameless, Pan, and Huck. They swarm around the adventurers, striking with metal claws and paralyzing gazes. Silly Lilly fireballs into the line of scarecrows, setting them all afire, and then summons a flanking dust devil to stir up the back of the line. Pan thunderwaves the murder of scarecrows twice, throwing them into walls and each other, injuring most and disrupting their skirmish line. Blameless shockingly grasps to get away from the line while Fin and Huck try to bottle them up and keep them away from the casters. Pan’s thunderwaves mortally damage the pod and it oozes away its disgusting life goo. Pan retrieves a glowing blood emerald shard from the mess.

 

Beard has that dream where he wakes up with half his hit points, whatever that means. It’s a notably calm day at the warren, where blades and three-dragon-ante cards are being sharped. Rooster enters, contemplating a paper, and summons Stitches, Nanny, Beard, and Bizzle to his office.

Rooster reveals the reason for his atypical lack of bellowed code color and priority number. The contract he contemplates requires discovery of the origin of a hip new street poison all the assassins want. And not just to find where the evil super-toxin gets made but also securing the means to make it for the R&S confidential customer, hence Rooster’s reluctance. Bizzle, with proverbial gold piece signs in his neutral eyes, points out that R&S could themselves make use of that knowledge to help the forces of good develop antitoxins, if the forces of good can afford R&S’s services.

Compunction assuaged, Rooster hands a sample vial of the chartreuse toxin to responsible adult Nanny and points them to Undertown, central hotbed of poisoning. Rooster doesn’t have a street name for the toxin, nor a specific contact. The group collaboratively decides on “Chartreuse Death-X” for the poison’s moniker and Bizzle convinces Beard to teleport using the vial as an associated object to locate a contact if not the actual source. What could go wrong?

The group appears in a jail cell with a surprised, masked human. He seems eager to believe that Bjargle sent them to his rescue, and Beard seems equally eager to believe that. Slow Bizzle inquires where the poison gets made in this here factory. Their cell host, Shiv, gets a little nervous about that question and he slips in to relieve Bizzle of a scimitar. Quick Nanny intercedes and Shiv finds himself holding Nanny’s waterskin at Bizzle’s throat instead of the scimitar. The awkwardness escalates when Beard begins rolling a blight spell in his glowing hands and Stitches shush, shush, shushes Shiv. When a prison guard out of view around the corner yells for some decorum, Bizzle reckons this would best be sorted back at R&S and they teleport out.

Rooster isn’t especially impressed with the simultaneous explanations when his operatives materialize in his office with a prisoner / hostage / person of interest. He makes the universal “close mouth” / “chicken dance” sign with both hands and throws a black patent-pending R&S Body Bag over Shiv, placing him in extradimensional stasis while Beard drags him to an interrogation cell.

Bad cops Stitches and Beard are first up alone with Shiv. Nanny and Bizzle observe through the one-way steel wall as Beard tries unsuccessfully to convince Stitches to bind Shiv’s ankles, just visible as Beard stands on the table barely lifting off the bag, but Stitches would rather eat her armor and yanks the bag off Shiv.

Stitches and Beard rapidly yell inquiries at Shiv and learn that he gets the CDX from his contact, Bjargle, in Undertown. The verbal abuse convinces Shiv he’s been institutionalized and he huddles in a corner of the cell while Stitches and Beard berate him. Beard magically searches him for poison and disease and finds Shiv suffers from a common Undertown malady, Dig Doodly Boo.

Good cops Nanny and Bizzle relieve Stitches and Beard and send them to get some funds from Rooster while they try to hire Shiv to make introductions with Bjargle. Nanny, through her helm of telepathy, knows Shiv agrees with the plan to the extent he wants to escape and ambush them, but what kind of untrustworthy, self-respecting rogue wouldn’t be plotting to turn the tables? For this service they agree upon 250 gp.

Meanwhile Stitches and Beard impose upon Rooster for some operating capital. He eventually figures out they want to pay off Shiv and aren’t just looking for a boat loan so he refers them to quartermaster Oaken. Stitches signs out two patent pending R&S Bank Bags of 1000 gp each.

Shiv gets paid half his commission up front and the group plus one steps into the mean streets to hire a cart into Undertown rather than expending Bizzle’s last teleportation charge of the day. Beard looks around for a suitable hire while Nanny and Stitches try unsuccessfully to keep Shiv in check. But Shiv is very slippy and gets away unseen until Beard transforms to a giant eagle and finds him trying to help some orphans rescue a kitten from a grandmother crossing the street, or some such nonsense.

Eventually Beard finds a cabby and Bizzle persuades him with 20 gp to take them to the very edge of Undertown, not a dagger’s edge farther. Irrepressible Shiv tries to ride up front but Beard yanks him into the carriage where he tries to help himself to Stitches’ pockets so she breaks his finger.  

In Undertown, Shiv borrows some chalk from Nanny to make a thieve’s cant marking on the town cistern. They adjourn to the Frosted Unicorn tavern to imbibe ale and stew while waiting for Bjargle. Beard looks appraisingly around at the torches and combustible materials. Shiv inquires why pick on him, to which Stitch replies because he’s vulnerable. Shiv’s pride is wounded but he appreciates the honest feedback.

A tavern torch winks out, signaling to Shiv the time for meeting Bjargle is nigh. The group collects outside near the cistern and Shiv warns them that four strangers, small as they are, might spook Bjargle. Nanny and Bizzle hang back in the shadows while strong Stitches and bag-holding Beard advance with Shiv for the introductions.

Once the parties meet, Shiv excuses himself and Bizzle, getting no indication from Nanny’s telepathic spying that things aren’t going perfectly according to plan, pays off Shiv the remaining 125 gp.

Bjargle cuts right to the chase: how much Venom do Stitches and Beard want? The price is now 100 gp, double because there are two of them. Beard thinks they want a measly single, but defers to their treasurer which really unnerves Bjargle who’s now looking around for Waterdeep cabinet members. Bjargle starts to leave so Bizzle and Nanny dash up yelling, Get him! Get him! while Bjargle starts yelling, Get them! Get them!

Stitches grapples Bjargle and Beard throws the bag over him, taking him out of the fight. Bjargle’s two arriving henchmen miss Nanny but get a dagger into Bizzle, fortunately missing the delivery of poison on him. Nanny and Bizzle turn to fight Orange Five and Blue Three while Shiv runs back in to try and depose Beard from holding Bjargle’s bag. Beard blights Shiv severely for his effort. Nanny and Bizzle drop Blue Three between her sneak attack and his finishing scimitars. Stitches moves to Shiv, finishing him with her warhammer and Nanny ends Orange Five.

The bodies can’t be dropped into the cistern because of the amount of Venom / CDX they carry but also because dropping dead bodies into the drinking supply is a gross thing to do to the townsfolk. Beard locates an empty apartment right off the area where they drag the bodies. Bizzle recovers almost all the gold paid to Shiv and hands back all the mission funding to Stitches who signed for it.

Beard summons eight mud mephits and commands them to secure Bjargle, but he releases Bjargle from the confining bag before the mephits are organized. Bjargle makes a run for it but not before Stitches relieves him of his poisoned dagger. Bjargle screams for help but Stitches shush, shush, shushes him and grapples him again.

PROLOGUE

Priority 2, code Yellow

“JJ, Nanny, Beard, Stiches, my office, stat!” calls Rooster.

You get up and meander over to the mission runner’s room and he closes the door.

“The four of you have been called in, for a sensitive and disturbing mission… Strings has gone AWOL.”
You all look at each other a little surprised and maybe a tinge hurt.  Strings has been your partner on so many contracts, what is he up to?
“Now you’re mercs, we get that you don’t owe us much, but you do need to inform us when you are breaking your contract AND you can not take company goods.  Strings left without any notice and he took with him an old mission log and a ring recently acquired by Shuffle and his crew.”
“Anything special about the ring?”
“We had not had time to investigate it, but it is a signet ring of some sort.  We were unable to identify it, but know that it is magic.”

This mission is going to require a lot of thinking on your feet, and I highly recommend you don’t try to solve all problems with your fists.  
To add another twist to this mission, our intel has placed Strings at Lord Oren’s Sky House, an interplanar “Inn”.  Oren is Lord of the Green Fey, a powerful creature indeed.  It is unlikely Oren is at the Sky House, but his emissary Hob knobknin runs it.
We have no idea why Strings would go there, except that it really is a good place to escape or hide.
How do we get there?  

“Dragon”
“What’s a DRAGON?”
“Oh oh oh… let me guess,” shouts Beard, “the Dimensional Reconissaince All-purpose Gondola of Magic!”
“Thats DRAGOM, can’t you spell? and no that’s clearly wrong.  You’re taking a Dragon: Large, scaly, big wings, breathes something nasty and able to swallow you whole without a second thought.”
“What?”
“Just follow the instructions in the envelope, you’ll be fine.”
“Also, this is VERY important… be careful about agreeing to anything on your trip.  You are going to be under the dominion of Lord Oren, a Fey Noble… any bargain you make is BINDING.  Even the smallest bargain, can get you trapped for life, or beholden to a fey creature, beware.”
“Find strings, get the book, and get home.”
“Oh, and your helm is not going to work in the astral sea, so you’re going to have to hitch a ride home, presumably on the same dragon… so be nice to him.”

The outside of the envelope has directions to a clearing about an hour outside of town.  When you open the envelope, there are three printed words: “Jaggerbad, Jaggerbad, Jaggerbad”.

LOGUE

Nanny, Beard, and JJ are lounging around the warren playing cards when Rooster interrupts from the mission runner’s ready room. It’s a priority two, code yellow mission to find AWOL Strings and retrieve some R&S property, a ruby red signet ring with undisclosed magical properties and a mission log.

Intel reports Strings has been observed at the skyhouse of Oren, Lord of Green Fey. Oren’s emissary is one William Finasort

Strings has been a fine coworker and friend, but business is business. Rooster hands Nanny a sealed envelope to be opened at a nearby field. She passes the envelope off to Beard, the brains of the operation.

The party makes the short walk to the designated field and Beard opens the envelope. He reads the three words written on the back of the enclosed paper: Jaggerbad, Jaggerbad, Jaggerbad.

It’s exactly 6:02 and Jaggerbad knows where and whom his patrons are as he touches down in the field. He is a colossally enormous iron dragon bearing an entire inn, the skyhouse, lashed to his back.

Nanny, Beard, and JJ board the skyhouse in baskets lowered by wooden sailors. As they ascend they observe wonky interplanar distortions.

William Finasort, their humble host for the journey, greets the party at the entrance to the inn. They are shown to a table in an elegant dining room where a skeletal drum and flute duo perform. Travellers of every description abound. Waitstaff deliver all-inclusive libations and stew. The only luxury missing is any obvious sign of Strings.

Beard selects a lone angel at a nearby table to begin a rapport. The angel is sad and has a sad story to relate, but Beard has the cure for sadness and, plus, he likes pineapple. The angel appears unmoved by these assertions.

Nanny scopes around an empty private room and sees a rainbow of celestial planets skewing by out a porthole. Jaggerbad’s skyhouse lands to disembark a salamander passenger onto a fiery world.

JJ requests a deck of cards as a lure for any of the inn’s shadier sorts who might plausibly have dealings with a rogue R&S operative. Beard careens away from the angel to help JJ shuffle the cards. JJ trades him places to apologize to the angel for Beard’s shenanigans as a way of introduction.

The angel, Nayle, has abandoned his god and finds himself out of work now. He’s a perpetual patron of the inn while he sorts things out. He shares a rumor that William, a capricious fellow in this angel’s opinion, has acquired the skyhouse from Oren.

Beard next helps himself to the company of a pair of apparent mercenaries conspiring at a nearby table. They recognize his R&S greycoat but deny his accusation that they work for Darkwater. One mercenary gets irritated and leaves the table. The other mercenary claims to be Strings in disguise.

Strings whispers emphatically that Beard must not be here, that it isn’t safe. Beard is confident this imposter is not Strings and remains unconvinced even when Strings slaps him and yanks his beard. The other mercenary returns and departs upstairs with Strings.

A wizardly fellow simultaneously descends from stairs on the opposite side of the room and approaches Beard, who is not easily fooled. “Strings?” This puzzles the wizard who doesn’t believe himself to be this Strings fellow. He relates a rumor that Jaggerbad might be anticipating retirement soon if he could ever escape his fey contract.

Beard excuses himself to discretely follow the mercenary claiming to be Strings upstairs but William the host intercepts him. William shows Beard to his room on the second level and hands over a glass key.

Nanny introduces herself to the wizard, Gamble, and they chit chat over some stew while JJ finishes his drink with the sad angel.

Nanny and Beard meet up and stroll around the periphery of the dining room to look for any missed opportunities. They skip chatting with the blue haired gnome because of her leashed beholder in one of the private rooms. The orc guarding the bride-to-be princess Ogmarhhhhhhgggggg in another private room is not terribly chatty but suggests an audience with the princess might be gained if a suitable wedding gift can be improvised.

A foursome of gnolls board the skyhouse causing JJ to speculate upon a Darkwater connection, but Nanny calls him out for being gnoll-racist. They stroll close to the gnolls to entice a confrontation, if such is brewing, but the gnolls are preoccupied and offer only a muttered insult. Runt.

Nanny and JJ introduce themselves at the table of a kenku, bullywug, and an especially golden dwarf who introduce themselves as Kendra, Todd, and Fulmer, respectively. Two of them are newlyweds and one of them suffers from a slowly diminishing curse of metallic transformation.

A request from Nanny for a tour of the kitchen is denied but her compliments to the chef will be passed along.

Nanny and JJ meet Baab, a tree-like fellow drinking water through his fingers.

Nanny and JJ, intercepted by omnipresent William, adjourn upstairs to see what Beard has learned and / or ruined.

Meanwhile, upstairs, Beard goes door to door looking for the mercenary claiming to be Strings. What this method lacks in subtlety it makes up for in efficiency. Most of the folks he disturbs want to know if this is their stop. They are generally reluctant, if not belligerent, toward Beard’s prying questions. Many rooms are empty or just too sensible to answer the incessant knocking.

Beard works his way through the rooms until an enthusiastically manic old man, introducing himself as Simon, answers his summons. Simon caught the first available dragon skyhouse to anywhere. Beard has a badger in his beard. Simon has a cat in his hat. Simon promises tea without a teapot. Beard remembers he’s looking for Strings. Simon offers Beard family biscuits. Beard excuses himself to knock on the next door. Simon encourages Beard and offers to shrink the door off its hinges. The reflection therapy is too much for Beard.

Beard continues combing through aggravated passengers until he finally locates the mercenary claiming to be Strings. Strings reminds Beard of the need for subtlety (shut up, you idiot!) and focuses Beard’s attention (slaps him repeatedly), especially when Beard gets grabby for the signet ring. When Beard does not comply with Strings’ expectations for decorum, Strings silences and mithril bands Beard and abandons him for the dining room.

Nanny and JJ, unaware that Beard has found Strings, use Nanny’s helm of telepathy from their room to drop eaves on the passengers below. Almost immediately someone is aware of her intrusion and tries to chat with Nanny. Nanny removes the helm. They dress with fancy duds from the magically anticipatory dresser drawers and return to the dining room.

Beard slips his binding by transforming to Fly Beard. He finds Strings downstairs in a private room and waits for the other mercenary to leave. He reverts back into plain old Beard sitting across the table from completely exasperated Strings. Strings tries unsuccessfully to sleep Beard out.

Nanny uses her helm to catch snippets from the meeting of the four gnolls and the non-Strings mercenary. Some plot is afoot to cause a major distraction and abduct a halfling. Strings, as the mercenary, brushes past the table and suggests surreptitiously that the R&S team meet him up in their room.

The meeting finally affords JJ the long awaited opportunity to ask, “Wot’s it all about, Strings?” Strings has hired some unscrupulous sorts to help him liberate his sister, a waitress in the skyhouse, from her fey obligations to William Finasort by eliminating, with extreme prejudice, the party of the second part. It’s way more than the R&S gang would like to endeavor, but Strings is a good friend and the mission objectives could just as well be accomplished by helping him as by cutting off his finger.

All agree to help Strings rescue his sister in exchange for the mission items, the log and ring. The log is surrendered immediately but the ring is needed for the job.

Strings emphasizes repeatedly that Jaggerbad, once released from his own fey bargain with William, would likely eat everyone he could and toss the rest into the astral sea. If there is any hope for survival then Jaggerbad’s cooperation must be secured first. Beard is a natural for the task as he can easily infiltrate William’s talking balcony in the front of the inn and parlay with Jaggerbad.

With only 45 minutes remaining, JJ rehearses with Beard the two vital dagger points to arrange with Jaggerbad:
1) Jaggerbad is released from his bargain with William
2) Jaggerbad delivers the passengers to their respective destinations, uneaten

It seems like Beard has the plan locked in, but then he begins improvising at the password-protected kitchen door. William notices the anomalous behavior and sleeps Beard out.

Sleepy Beard is locked in his room by ship’s crew and it takes Nanny to pick open the lock. She feeds him a salvage bar and rehearses the plan with him yet again. Once he agrees to the plan she unties him and off he goes.

Strings has rejoined his caper in progress, keeping the plan on track with his co-mercenary and their hired gnolls. Nanny dons her helm of telepathy to monitor Beard’s progress with Jaggerbad. JJ ties up William’s concentration with a thousand questions. Beard easily infiltrates the kitchen and areas beyond and eventually makes his way to the balcony, where he sees the gnolls spider-walking around the outside of the inn ready to cut some, hopefully not all, of the inn’s tethers.

Beard negotiates with Jaggerbad: his release from William for safe delivery of the passengers. Jaggerbad wisely doubts Beard’s resources, abilities, and mental stability. He stipulates a time limit on the deal, the expiration of which will find Beard fatally covered in gravy and eaten by Jaggerbad. But ultimately they agree: liberation for delivery.

The gnolls fulfill their distraction contract by severing several tethers. The inn pitches to the left and then to the right, violently throwing its occupants around. Thus committed, Strings aims the ruby red signet at William and a destroyer materializes. JJ climbs Baab for a better view and Nanny cautiously waits to see who will fight whom.

William commands all passengers back to their rooms, but practically no one moves at all. William disguises himself as a wooden sailor and no one knows which he is, least of all the destroyer whose single purpose is to destroy William. The destroyer opens up at whatever convenient wooden sailors present themselves and the battle begins.

Beard re-enters the kitchen from the balcony and sets about rescuing the frightened, fey-bound staff by fireballing the free-swinging kitchen doors. Unaccustomed to Beard’s unorthodox methods, the kitchen staff lock themselves into a storeroom. Beard thunderwaves the storeroom doors, but it takes a couple of tries to shatter the doors, spraying splinters into the terrified people. To calm them, he declares their bargains will be over soon and they will be delivered from their deals.

In the dining room, the destroyer lances wooden sailors one by one with his energy beams. Nanny ducks around, sneaking attacks in where possible. JJ grabs the wooden arm of one of Nanny’s victims, clubbing and kicking his way over to a black tentacle pinning Strings to the deck.

The destroyer, while effective at destroying, has two major drawbacks. The first, it can no longer discriminate its original target, William. The second, it possesses an utter lack of empathy for collateral damage, such as when JJ stands in the path of its destructive beam aimed at nearby wooden sailors. JJ throws a disengaging kick and flees, gravely wounded by the destroyer, far from any nearby wooden sailors to drink an R&S brand potion of cure wounds.

Beard joins the tussle and burning hands a tidy row of wooden sailors, a very effective attack that sets them afire. Encouraged by this success, Beard encores by moonbeaming all around Strings’ pinned head to knock off the black tentacle. Unfortunately, the tentacle is a magic projection from William and the beam serves only to bake Strings’ head. Twice. Contrite Beard cancels the moonbeam and dispels the tentacle. A healing word puts Strings right again.

William exploits the problems with the destroyer by disguising JJ as William while William remains disguised at Wooden Sailor Number Five. The destroyer knocks JJ out completely but quite fortunately chooses Wooden Sailor Number Five, the real William, as its next target and he is finally vanquished.

The remaining wooden sailors go inert, lacking a master. Beard asserts loudly that he is their new master now, but a basso voice clears itself and responds, “I don’t think so…” Beard quickly reverses himself, not wishing to be Jaggerbad’s smothered delicacy.

Strings is reunited with his sister and surrenders the ring. Jaggerbad delivers all the passengers to their destinations and returns the R&S team to the sword coast. JJ inquires as to the final disposition of the skyhouse and Jaggerbad dumps it off in the field for him.

And that’s the story of the founding of Jaggerbad Resort, an R&S subsidiary, LLC.

Rooster sweeps into the Ransom & Salvage warren breakroom to announce a code red and a priority two mission. Stitches, Nanny, Strings, and Bizzle quickly establish that code red is synonymous with priority two so in fact there is only one mission.

This time it seems a rogue dungeon dwelling wizard is mixed up with golems. The mission requires the team to determine the wizard’s motives and alliances, and mixing it up is authorized if things go south. The ongoing secondary mission to collect shards of the blood emerald remains in effect.

The BURPS (Big Uranium Redstone Powered Ship) delivers the team right to the dungeon entrance where two exploded rock golems no longer stand guard. Lacking any door, sign, or other restrictive social contract, Bizzle strolls right in across the fastidiously clean floor and up to one of four statues lining the foyer. It comes to life.

The four statues, golems all, order the party to halt, they can go no further, the master commands it. Strings inquires as to the identity and class features of this so-called master. The golems, though not forthcoming with that information, offer, nay insist, to escort the adventurers to the master. Bizzle tries triggering a logical error in the golems by pointing out that it is hardly possible to go no further AND be escorted in, but the golems catch the exception and demand to escort the party away from the dungeon.

The golems move out of their alcoves and crowd the adventurers intimidatingly, but the dedicated R&S operatives do not fade. Violence breaks out when the golems attempt to physically remove them.

Strings inspires the team by viciously mocking the golems. Stitches warhammers on a duo, one with purple trim and the other with yellow trim. At first she hates the purple one more, but then the yellow one picks her up by her feet and deposits her outside the dungeon. Bizzle’s scimitars break a third golem until Sinistra flies from his grip and sticks into a column on the other side of the room. Nanny sneaks attacks on the fourth but nearly loses her wedding ring and the attached finger before crumbling the construct.

The golems make use of shields that fire crossbow bolts from the center, an ingenious design but insufficient to resist the withering R&S assault. With two golems decommissioned, Stitches’s purple nemesis removes a stone in the wall and presses a concealed button; an alarm bell can be heard in the distance.

Nanny crumbles Stitches’s yellow nemesis and Bizzle knocks out her bell-ringing purple nemesis. Nothing imminently terrible happens as a consequence of the bell ringing so the party rests outside the dungeon for an hour.

As the party gathers itself to press on into the dungeon depths, fast moving service golems clean up the destroyed battle golems and gather usable parts into bags. Nanny snags a bag from its service golem who struggles momentarily to maintain its grip, but then they speed off into the dungeon.

The party, struggling to keep up, follows the service golems to an assembly or reassembly room where a microfactory reintegrates the recovered parts back into golems. Each is provisioned with a crystal, dipped in blueness, and sent down the hall to a training room where they crossbow practice dummies. At this rate of production, it seems like there may be a sizeable trained and equipped golem force nearby.

Strings, mindful of the mission to locate the wonderful wizard, and equally mindful of the necessarily magical character of said wizard, casts detect magic and the party continues to casually scout around the facility, happily ignored by its animated populace.

Although his spell detects no magic, Strings’s ear detects conversation on the other side of a door. Snipets regarding golems, the blood emerald, and alliances suggests this is the correct door to find. Nanny uses her adept skills to make safe and unlock the untrapped, unlocked door. The talking ceases.

Strings disguises the small party as small service golems. Stitches takes the role of supervisor as indicated by red piping. They grab Clorox® Disinfecting Wipes from a dispenser station in the hall and confidently enter the room. Stitches dances the supervisor jig while the others feign deep cleaning.

The conversationalists are, unsurprisingly, Craig the Insidious Lich, DBA Destroyer & Co., and the golem training wizard who chides the “service golems” for being late. The ruse gives the R&S operatives access to the private conversation from which they learn that Craig is demanding the blood emerald. The wizard retorts he needs it for the ongoing golem program. As a timely demonstration, a thirty-strong squad of uber golems enters at that moment, dashing any possibility of overwhelming Craig.

Craig allows that the golem army would be most useful, but that 1000gp for each is laughably exorbitant for a non-golden lich and his counter offer of nothing at all with free shipping is accepted by the wizard.

With a sly look, the wizard demands all golems must leave. The “service golems” usher out the battle golems but never quite make it out of the room themselves, having need to clean up after the messy departure. The supervisor dances. The wizard overlooks this disobedience in his excitement to reveal to Craig his secret golem project: Nesus Alive.

Suppressing his enthusiasm, Craig wonders whether that dancing “service golem” has malfunctioned? The wizard reiterates his order for the service golems to leave. Instead, the disguised party members begin feigning various malfunctions while the wizard yells, “Pickles!” over and over.

Bizzle and Nanny share a knowing glance, reckoning the ruse has run its course if not a fair bit further. His scimitars and her short swords go to work on Craig, but Craig once more demonstrates his uncanny anticipation of the unexpected as a trap door opens and he climbs into the back of the large, emerging golem of black iron, splendidly replete with a fiery skin and pulsing blood emerald shard in its chestpiece.

As if that isn’t surprising enough, R&S specialist Thumper, astride Monty, springs from deep concealment in that very room and charges the Craig golem with his lance and puts an offhand crossbow bolt into the golem’s eye, “Ha HA!” There is no time to wonder how long Thumper had lain in ambush for that moment.

Stitches hits the golem just right with her warhammer to paralyze it giving Thumper, Bizzle, and Nanny an easy target. Strings heats the golem’s metal skin cooking Craig like an unholy roast. Craig starts to regain control of the construct but Stitches again stuns the contraption and knocks it over.

Craig, unable to reboot the golem with his goose cooking, regains his composure and begins throwing counterspells against Strings’s attempts to heat and bane him and the golem he rode in. Satisfied with tying up Craig’s attention while his martial companions beat on the golem, Strings throws around more inspiration.

The wizard, seeing his best customer in trouble, summons a couple of golems to assist and they pound Strings unconscious. Stitches rescues Strings with some deep healing from Moradin while Thumper intercepts the two additions. It works, sort of, as the two golems turn their crossbowing shields on Monty. Strings intercedes to help Monty fend off harm, but it’s a nasty attack.

While Thumper, Stitches, and Strings manage the wizard’s golem additions, Bizzle and Nanny keep pressure on the stricken Craig golem until it finally blows apart, a beam of red decimating the ceiling as the blood emerald shard levitates powerfully in the air. Nanny throws her greycoat over the shard immobilizing it to the floor.

Strings noshes his salvage bar and tries to suggestively calm the wizard, enticing him to stop making so much trouble. The wizard is unwilling and resists with his own countermagic.

Craig, now exposed, lashes out ineffectively with his silver / emerald convertible sword-hammer, Backstabber. Stitches casts to banish Craig but his legendary resistance prevents the effect. Nanny strikes at Craig’s ability to resist effects and Strings rapid-fires bane through the counterspells until it lands.

Craig’s mage hand fetches Nanny’s greycoat wrapping the shard. He insidiously sends eleven magic missiles into Stitches along with a crossbow bolt from the wizard’s golem and she’s barely clinging to life. Thumper attempts to cure her wounds but Craig insidiously counters the spells.

Craig’s mistake is subtle but important to Stitches as she times her next banishment such that Craig can’t react while he’s occupied countering the healing spell. Poof! Craig finds himself in pandamonium or some other miserable plane of existence. His dispelled mage hand drops Nanny’s coat into her waiting arms along with the shard. Nanny finishes off the last remaining golem.

Strings softens up the wizard’s obstinance and everyone pleads with him not to deal with Craig who won’t even pay him for the golems. These advanced business concepts of profit are quite foreign to the wizard, whose name is finally known as Returrac, but eventually he is convinced to take an hour away from the factory to chat with R&S’s business consulting experts about a better future. Returrac agrees to the meeting in principle and Bizzle seizes upon his momentary willingness to teleport him directly to R&S.

Stitches checks her countdown timer on the banishment spell and urges prompt departure to the BURPS.

Craig pops back into the empty room.

Rooster interrupts the R&S domino finals, “Bizzle, Nanny, Nut, Stitches, Strings, let me talk to you. Any of you know who Ignatius Barto is?”

Nut might. “Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! No …”

Strings knows that Don Ignatius Barto is leader of the Barto crime family.

Rooster continues: Margo Barto, Don Barto’s daughter, was abducted for ransom by the Bonnie Shoats gang. Don Barto hired a prominent R&S competitor, Blackwater, to make the ransom, but Blackwater lost both Margo and the ransom in the botched exchange at the Cob Roller tavern in Hogsfoot, a very tough borough. As a result, Don Barto has issued discrete prospective contracts to several security firms to recover Margo, but only one will collect the lucrative payout. Margo may be identified by her surpassing beauty punctuated by a warted wart on her nose.

Rooster wants this win so the operatives are offered a double portion if successful. He summons Quint who enters with rumpled, tubular contraptions that work as stilts to make the short folk appear more or less human. These rumpled stiltskins incorporate the additional feature of one mechanically-assisted super jump, after which the mechanism must undergo a complicated reset [once per day].

The team has a quick huddle and settles on a plan to pretend to hire the Bonnie Shoats for security and then work out from that where Margo might be found.

Hogsfoot is a harbor town so the team arrives on the A.R.R.M.P.T., the Armored Rapid Response Marine Personnel Transport. Right off the docks the team meets a woman who knows the Cob Roller tavern. She directs them to just follow the stench, and that’s really impressive criticism from a woman beating fish. Nut inquires as to the availability of ham locally and that question makes Fish Beater really go to pieces. This is a fish town. Stitches gives her a parting hairy eyeball.

Setting out for the Cob Roller tavern, Strings asks a young lady why she is leashed to a house. “Why should I be allowed in the house?” is not one of the few acceptable answers to that question, but it seems too early in the mission to escalate to a violent encounter with a slave owner.

The party easily finds its way to the Cob Roller tavern. As expected, this is a real hive of scum and villainy. The barkeep serves either swill or, Stitches’s favorite, uther. Accounts vary on how much cat product uther contains, but it is chunky and smells of lamp oil.

Nanny befriends a cat she names Goat. The serving wench offers to cook Goat up, but Nanny declines, instead purchasing the animal raw and living.

It seems that the real business of the tavern is done in a sunken side room where Bizzle moseys in, hoping to get connected with the Bonnie Shoats. There he finds a fellow with red pants and his bodyguard. Underworld-appropriate nods are exchanged, in accordance with social contract. For the purposes of parity, Bizzle takes the role of muscle and summons the boss from upstairs. Nut picks up that cue, “I got it from here, Bob,” and, out of sight of Red Pants, casts disguise self to lengthen his arms. Nanny uses her telepathic helm to eavesdrop on the thoughts of Red Pants who is concerned that the party is associated with “the dogs”. Strings enters playing Nut’s improvised entrance theme song on the lute:

♫ “He has the longest arms and that’s why he’s the boss.” ♫

Stitches has acquired extra uther and brings it in.

By now Nanny knows that Red Pants is growing concerned at the quantity and quality of short-armed weirdos crowding into his barroom, but his concern truly escalates when Nut strolls to the head of the table and introduces his squirrel Munk as Harry Squirreldini, the boss. The first thing Red Pants needs to know, explains Nut, is that Squirreldini hates gnolls.

That does it for Red Pants; he’s ready to leave. He offers his room to the party. Nanny tries to steer the situation back to the plan, inquiring of the Bonnie Shoats. Well of course Ioun Bob Red Pants knows the Bonnie Shoats! He’s a lieutenant in said organization as clearly indicated by his red pants, duh!

Bizzle proposes that Ioun would make a good hostage. Ioun agrees in principle but feels generally unwilling to play that part. His bodyguard, Brock, tries unsuccessfully to hit Stitches with a warhammer. Stitches tries unsuccessfully to hit Brock right back. Nut uses an advanced wizard technique to fireball the entire room but only damage Brock. For that imposition, Ioun punts Munk  into the wall then fails spectacularly to acrobatically escape his captors, face-planting into the table.

Brock is subdued with extreme prejudice and stuffed into a bag of holding. Strings sleeps Ioun out while Nanny disguises his red pants and catches everyone up on the telepathic intel. Bizzle secures his limbs with mithril banding. Strings haggles with the barkeep for a fair price to repair the scorched bar.

It’s late afternoon when the party emerges from the Cob Roller with Ioun. When he won’t shut up about negotiating his release, Stitches hits him with her hammer. They make for the boat but the sun is setting and Ioun assures them they’ll be very sorry soon so Nanny finds a nearby safe house through a broken wall and down a concealed stairwell where Ioun can be interrogated without the opportunity for being discovered.

Inside the safe house, Nut finds a dagger. Unfortunately the dagger is held at his throat by a thief, Winky Bob. Nanny converses with Winky Bob in thieves’ cant to assure him everyone’s all real friendly here no matter what this looks like, but the sight of Ioun makes him unhappy. He explains that Ioun, like all the Bonnie Shoats, is a wereboar moments away from lunacy.

Further questioning reveals, mostly through Nanny’s telepathic exploration, that the Barto ransom deal fell through because the Bonnie Shoats doublecrossed Blackwater. Margo is being held in a Bonnie Shoats hideout down by the docks.

Bizzle reckons teleporting to the docks beats walking through wereboar-infested streets, but underestimates Ioun’s willingness to be teleported. The teleport resolves on a different boat and without Ioun. The fate of Winky Bob versus Ioun Bob Red Pants will remain a mystery.

Nut takes to the sky to scout around for this supposed hideout. Bizzle and Nanny start going door-to-door around the harbor, finding people cowering behind locked doors not harboring secret hideouts. Empathetic Nanny gives her cat to a man who stabs her with a pitchfork. He’s thankful.

A wereboar finds the party and knocks Nanny down. The wereboar is quickly subdued by Nanny, Stitches, and Strings. Bizzle deploys his stiltskin to jump to the roof and runs, leaping over the narrow streets, toward where airborne Nut scorching-rays and blights the gathering wereboars. Stitches climbs to the roof and uses her dwarven thrower to remotely hammer the wereboars.

A basso rumble of big trouble can be heard by all.

Nut rejoins the party and gets a big heal from Stitches. Several wereboars block their path but Strings’ hypnotic pattern occupies a few of them and Nut’s wall of fire discourages the rest, allowing the party to divide and conquer the wereboars attempting to surround them in the street.

Bizzle identifies from his position on the rooftops where the wereboars are pouring from their hideout. A rumbling super mega awesome wereboar boss emerges from the hideout extensively damaging it. Because of that damage, Bizzle can see a bound lady inside. He leaps onto the hideout’s roof which the wereboar boss demolishes beneath him. Bizzle, positively identifying Margo’s warty wart, helm-teleports with her to the boat. The wereboar boss screams in angry confusion.

The rest of the party continues street fighting the abundantly emerging wereboars. Nut messages Bizzle for a sitrep and receives a report that the package is in the boat but under attack so the party begins to pull back toward the boat. The rampaging wereboar boss is crashing through buildings on his way as well.

A wereboar jumps into the boat and tusks Margo unconscious. Bizzle pours a healing potion into Margo and goes to work on the wereboar with his scimitars. Strings shows up and scares off the wereboar with some dissonant whispers. Nut covers the retreat, scheming some final dramatic wizardry while everyone else collects aboard.

Stitches activates her stiltskins to jump from the rooftops into the boat but one malfunctions sending her hammer over teakettle some distance up the edge of the harbor and crashing through the roof of an alarmed citizen. Nut flies over to help her. Bizzle backs the boat away from the wereboar boss just crashing up to the water’s edge.

The super mega awesome wereboar boss rips apart a large section of railing and hucks it at the boat. Strings uses some choice cutting words to discourage his accuracy and the railing falls far short. Nut summons the boat over for pickup and boards with Stitches. Strings pilots the boat out of the harbor.

As they depart, the super awesome wereboar boss reverts into the man Nanny identifies as Sloan, the principal of the Bonnie Shoats as she learned from Ioun through telepathic snooping. Sloan smiles unnervingly, as though he hasn’t lost at all. Bizzle, surveying the damage to Sloan’s town, tosses him a silver which he catches one-handed. His hand smokes a little.

Back in civilization, Don Ignatious Barto is reunited with his daughter. A week later, it is reported that Barto was murdered by wereboar.

Rooster announces a priority one mission to recover a shard of the Bloodstone Emerald. The Ransom & Salvage operatives will know it by sight because it pulses red beams of light. There’s no time to waste so they will use Bizzle’s FHRTT helm to teleport to the entrance of Sune’s Muse, the same location of the Quicksilver heist previously.

The doors stand open despite the lateness of the evening. Bizzle finds a tripped needle trap on the door upon which an impaled orc finger still hangs, sans orc. Inside, a troll, whose name Nanny later learns is Uhh Uhh Uhh Uhh Uhh Uhh Uhh Uhh Uhh Uhh Uhh Uhh Uhh, guards the lobby. Bizzle queries the troll who reveals his gang is onsite to find the Bloodstone Emerald shard. Figures.

Bizzle, who has always considered it less than ideal to steal from others in the business, bids farewell to the troll who laments the gnome’s small brain. Strings persuades Bizzle that whoever these guys are they probably aren’t going to use the shard for niceness and Bizzle’s ideals need calibration.

Nanny and Catty Batty, who need no convincing, attack the troll. Uhh Uhh can’t land a claw or bite but does manage to yell out an alarm in orcish. Setting aside personal ethics to help his friends, Bizzle slashes in with both scimitars, severing the troll’s right arm. Strings mocks the asymmetrical troll which inspires Nanny’s twin-handed piercing. Batty places a critical strike on the troll’s dexterity just as three orogs arrive.

The orogs don’t contribute much, either because of confidence or disinterest. They observe for a while and depart after Strings banes them.

When Bizzle slashes off the troll’s left arm and both arms self-animate to grapple Nanny and Batty, Batty points out that maybe Bizzle ought to stop subdividing the troll. She teleports to a torch and lights it. When Nanny sneaks a devastating attack that drops the troll, Batty puts the torch to its open arm socket and Uhh Uhh burns up immediately.

Strings and Nanny go to work on the left arm which Batty flings off her leg and ignites with the torch. Bizzle eventually stomps the right arm lifeless but not before impaling his foot on a troll fingernail. He’s about to ignite the arm but Batty stops him, pointing out Nanny’s attached leg. Bizzle punts the arm away from Nanny with his good foot and Strings ignites it with Batty’s torch. Nanny extracts the debilitating claw from Bizzle’s foot.

Strings listens at one of the closed doors and hears a hissing sound. Batty listens at another door and overhears snippets of a conversation regarding adventurer tacos. Nanny hears four orcs and an orog walking around. Bizzle, unacquainted with subtlety, pokes his head out and inquires of the orcs what they’re doing, to which they reply candidly they are waiting to ambush some adventurers. Nanny peeks out a different direction and sees an oil bomb, fuse lit, against one of the doors.

When the doors are blown apart, the party sneaks through the smoke, covered by Batty’s pass without a trace. Batty teleports to the ceiling and uses her bat cloak to walk along to the stairs. The others thread their way through the orcs standing around taunting for the adventurers to come out of the lobby.

Ahead on the gallery stairs, Craig, looking somewhat wispy, ethereal, and purple, meets a werewolf who has failed him for the last time. Craig extends a bony black hand and green flames engulf the werewolf.

Craig ascends to the second floor, followed surreptitiously by the party who observe him using his silver and emerald sword as a pulsing red directional indicator. They follow him to a drake statue as his sword pulses faster and faster until it glows a steady red. He reaches into the mouth of a drake statue and pulls free a “tooth” matching the description of the shard of the Bloodstone Emerald.

Now or never time, Bizzle crosses the room from his hiding place using the mithril banding to silence Craig’s spellcasting and attempts to grapple Craig unsuccessfully. Batty taps her ki and rains a flurry of blows on Craig. Craig’s sword transforms into a warhammer and he sends Bizzle, croquet-style, into a statue each time he returns to miss grappling Craig. Strings keeps his inspiration and mockery flowing, and his rapier stabbing. Nanny uses these distractions to sneak in attacks until Craig explodes into smoke and departs with the shard back to, they guess, the astral plane. The silence spell hopefully prevents the scuffle from attracting unwanted orc attention.

Batty teleports into a nearby alcove to investigate some murmurs that might be undercommon. She finds a nothic, whom Strings recognizes as the oracle, babbling away in undercommon and wearing blinders. The oracle, like Craig, suffers from some interplanar effect of seeming a little wispy around the edges and fading.

Nanny conversates with the oracle telepathically and reports to the party that the oracle is warning about some kind of coming Skullguy Flamesword Colossus. Batty removes the oracle’s blinders and, panicked, it attacks her with a rotting gaze, as though it is mistakenly seeing something other than its rescuer. Suddenly the oracle solidifies in this plane and ceases hostility.

Bizzle doesn’t care for the sound of this colossus business so he pounds his untested salvage bar, version 2, to ready himself. In addition to the expected effects of eight hours rest, he finds he’s moving twice as fast and no longer conversant in common. He confides in Nanny that he feels especially splendid and capable, but all she hears is “flgr8”.

An additional unexpected benefit of the salvage bar is that Bizzle may now converse with the oracle. The oracle explains that the colossus isn’t arriving here and now, but instead the oracle has had a vision of Craig collecting all seven of the Bloodstone Emerald shards and summoning the colossus to Daggerford.

Bizzle explains that R&S is a for-profit enterprise and that the oracle should hire them through one of their many fine outside salesmen for the Craig and colossus project, but that the oracle’s rescue is already covered by a previous scope of work so of course it would be no problem to fight their way through the dozen orcs to the front entrance for that purpose.

As it turns out, the oracle’s teleport is not affected by the magical suppression field and the rescuers find themselves back at headquarters, rescued by the hostage.

Introductions, awkward because of the communication barrier, are made between the oracle and Rooster.

Rooster pays the party but takes back half for losing the Bloodstone Emerald.

Inside one of Waterdeep’s many shadowy intelligence gathering installations, Agent #12 diligently pours over goblinoid forecasts until he’s suddenly interrupted by a knock on the door, a door so secret that this is the first time it has ever been knocked upon. He exchanges a bewildered glance with his colleague, Agent #42, who shrugs and calls out, “Who is it…?”.

The knocking persists, growing into banging and then crashing and ultimately a green fireball of destruction. A two-tone silver and emerald sword enters through the haze. The two-tone silver and emerald sword is followed by blackened skeletal hand. The blackened skeletal  hand is followed by a long, crooked nose. The long, crooked nose is followed by an ominous black hood obscuring the features of whatever follows after the hood. Neither agent knows this insidious lich, now standing before them, by his insidious name, Craig, DBA The Insidious Lich & Co., LLC.

“Where is the oracle kept?”

Agent #42 well knows the organization keeps the oracle at an undisclosed location offsite. His deception training kicks in and he answers, “On the second floor”. Unfortunately, Craig counted the floors when he rolled up: one.

“You lie.” And with that, Craig’s bipartite sword biparts Agent #42. Craig turns to Agent #12. “Where is the oracle kept?”

“I’d rather die than tell you,” Agent #12 answers selflessly. Craig mutters to himself, perhaps discouraged and bemoaning the fact he got out of bed this morning? No, it’s an incantation that explodes Agent #12’s head leaving behind his teetering torso with flaming neck hole.

Craig need only stare at underachieving goofball Agent #69, completely inert during the preceding events, before he eagerly shares everything he knows about the oracle’s location, and Craig gratefully launches him into the wall instead of horribly murdering him.

Summoned by the ruckus, General Captain Falcone sweeps into the room with her two personal guards, unaware of Craig’s presence. She wakens Agent #69 who confesses, “I told him … where the oracle … is,” before expiring. Insidious laughter behind Falcone preludes two death screams and she turns to see her guards fall, Craig’s two-tone sword still protruding from one.

General Falcone draws her steel and slashes at Craig, but he grabs the blade with his black boned hand. She kicks at Craig, but he paralyzes her with more muttering before recovering his blade and delivering his enigmatic new signature poetic stinger: “The Colossus is here….”

. . . .

Rooster barges in, “Everyone to the P.T.A.T.A.! We have a mission.”
“What priority?” Bizzle notices that the priority never changes the frantic urgency with which these adventures begin, but that never stops him from looking for a pattern.

“It’s a Priority One! Now, you regulars follow me to the first P.T.A.T.A., and you four in the red shirts go with that pilot who is one day away from retirement to the second P.T.A.T.A.” Rooster emphasizes with his pointing finger, “One P.T.A.T.A., Two P.T.A.T.A.!” and off they go.

. . . .

Flying over Daggerford to the outskirts, a great ring wall of black storm clouds surrounds a three-building fortified outpost. Green lightning streaks through the gloom as the two P.T.A.T.A.s fly into the blackness. A jarring explosion rocks Rooster’s crew as P.T.A.T.A. two, stricken by the lightning, grows a tail of green flames. Bizzle cries out in lament, “Catty Batty! Nnnnooooooo!!”
“I’m right here, Bizzle.”
“Oh.”

P.T.A.T.A. two crashes into the center of the outpost compound in a ball of green fire. Rooster touches P.T.A.T.A. one down next to it, swivels around to the crew, and directs them to defend the oracle from Lich Craig and the Orcs. Bizzle snorts derisively at the idea that Craig could be walking around without a head and checks his Bag of Holding– No Craig’s head! Must be Nanny playing a joke.

The A Team disembarks and runs to help extract the B Team from the burning wreckage from which the pilot’s hand extends in a final reaching grasp. The party brainstorms ideas for rescue but green lightning strikes the grotesque hand until all hope is extinguished, unlike the hand aflame in green.

Guards run thither and fro as the figure of General Falcone strides from the guard house. Strings, mission scribe, is nudged forward for all his charisma, but Thumper preempts him. “We are from Ransom and Salvage. Who’s here to follow our orders?”

General Falcone bristles at the notion of following any of Thumper’s orders and asserts that she is the customer, large and in charge. Lich-led Orcs have been attacking the outpost all day and the oracle is at the bottom of the well unwilling to meet with people, unwilling to be transported or teleported to safety, but perfectly willing to be protected at any cost of life and limb. At R&S the customer is always right, so preparations to repel the next attack begin.

Bizzle uses mithril banding to fortify the three outer doors with arcane locking. Thumper suggests using the steel javelin gatling guns from the wrecked P.T.A.T.A. to defend the walls. Bizzle wrests one off with strength and Catty Batty survives removing the other. The guns are re-emplaced on opposite sides of the compound. Raucous war chanting can be heard from the west building where Falcone silently waits atop the roof. Her wait isn’t long.

From the western front, a dozen Orcs emerge from the foggy storm along with an odd fellow known as Hue Manoid who immediately locks onto Catty Batty occupying the nearby javgun and moves toward her. General Falcone gets first blood with a silver streaking arrow of light that ends abruptly at an exploding Orc. Bizzle opens up with the eastern javgun on a few Orcs who mistakenly stumble out of the fog. A critical malfunction sickens Bizzle and he stumbles toward the north building where Thumper recalls a clinic.

Strings hypnotizes a half dozen Orcs and makes the same attempt on Hue. Hue is too wise to fall for Strings’ pattern, but not wise enough to avoid a couple of crossbow bolts from Thumper. Hue changes to werewolf form and confronts Catty Batty in the timeless dog-chase-cat trope. Strings viciously mocks Wolf Hue, but only silver stick and silver stones will break his bones, so Thumper pulls out his silvered rapier and breaks a few of his bones. Catty Batty continues the momentum with a triple attack of her rapier and claws, but Wolf Hue tosses a pouch of catnip from his belt distracting her until she can resist it.

Wolf Hue disengages from the scuffle and withdraws through the hypnotized Orc clump so attentions next turn to the Orcs scaling the western wall. General Falcone breaks a piece off but Thumper breaks off several more pieces with a conjured barrage which clears a nice, straight swath through the Orc mob dropping Hue as well.

Bizzle finds his way to Bob who works on his illness with acupuncture. The lure of quick relief stretches into a much longer ordeal as the procedure requires complete stillness followed by a careful removal of the needles, lest a lucky shot turn a protruding needle into amplifying shrapnel.

Outside in the compound, the Orcs have broken against the defenses. Thumper and Monty hear croaking from the well and try to ascertain the significance. Thumper gets the sense it’s very important and beckons with an R&S come hither whistle to help investigate further. They agree Catty Batty and Bizzle will remain topside with Monty to assist with possible follow up attacks.

Descending into the well, Thumper sees a single red beady eye. Alarmed, he hollers, “Beholder! Kill it with fire!” and the eye scampers away on unseen feet. Attempts to communicate are answered with, “Ladle ladle ladle, rhubarb, rhubarb, peas and carrots, rhubarb,” which helmtelligent Thumper recognizes, but does not comprehend, as Undercommon. That assuages his fears since everyone knows Beholders speak Beholder which would sound more like, “Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote, the droghte of March hath perced to the roote.”

Thumper and Strings pursue the creature, a Nothic and presumably also the oracle, while gently coaxing it to stop and chat. All the while they have the sense they are being watched. The passage becomes blocked by a lava stream, but the communication impasse becomes unblocked when Thumper asks, “Why are we down here?”
“Why are you down here?” answers the Nothic socratically.
“Well, you wanted us down here. Something we can do for you?”
“I am hungry.”
“Well, do you eat halfling?” jokes Thumper, grinning sideways at Strings. But the Nothic isn’t laughing so Thumper and Strings excuse themselves hurriedly to rejoin the battle to protect it.

Outside, horns herald the next phase as Craig rides up from the west on a skeleton’s back. Craig levels his two-tone sword, transforming into a two-tone spear, at the north building and it erupts in green flames. He informs Falcone her time has come and steps off his skeleton onto the burning roof, pausing only to disintegrate a guard, and engages the General in a mighty clash of adamantine on emerald.

Orcs encircle and advance upon the entire outpost perimeter. Catty Batty fires up the javgun and picks off many Orcs, occasionally jumping down to stab and swipe at them personally. Monty delivers Bizzle to the rooftop to confront Craig, but General Falcone, noticing the main gate under assault, directs Bizzle to cover it instead. Bizzle jumps down and attempts to alert the burning building’s occupants of their peril but they won’t move without a password from Bob, and the password is not THEROOFISONFIREYOUREALLGOINGTODIE.

Craig notices when Strings and Thumper emerge from the well and yells out, “Now I have you.” Thumper points at himself, confused at the personal shout out, and Craig clarifies, “No, not you,” and indicates the well behind him. Strings mocks the first Orc intruder he encounters and the Orc dies from the ridicule. Orcs continue to slam themselves against the main gate, but do more harm to themselves than the arcanely locked door.

Thumper, his thinking cap running full chat, hatches a plan to dispatch Craig that he never sees coming. Securing one end of his adventurer’s rope around his waist, he tosses the opposite end for Monty to anchor. He climbs to the roof within ten feet of Craig, no more and no less, digs in his pocket for his portable hole and holds it up for Craig’s inspection. Craig shrugs, so what? Thumper jams the portable hole into his bag of holding, annihilating both extradimensional devices (not to mention phase III of the plot), and Craig falls through the resulting portal to his new home in the astral plane, never to be seen again except by the one or two guardsmen in the building beneath him. Monty successfully pulls Thumper free of the portal.

Bizzle pleads with Falcone to order the guards out of the engulfed building but she reveals that General Bob, of acupuncture fame, is in charge of this garrison and he constantly changes the password. She’s powerless to help.

Despite the lack of supervision, the Orcs do not desist in their assault. Strings takes over the javgun to cover Catty Batty as she goes over the wall to wreak havoc behind the Orc lines. Monty takes over the opposite javgun and Thumper commandeers a crossbow from a fallen guardsman to work on the Orcs who have breached the east wall and threaten control of the well. Bizzle parlays with the one Orc outside the main gate who will talk with him, Jefffffffffffffff, and attempts to convince them to call off the hopeless attack. Jefffffffffffffff is having none of it.

The team picks off all but a few of the assault who finally manage to break down the main gate right on top of Bizzle who is repeatedly injured as Orc after dense Orc walks across him. Strings throws down hypnotic patterns while Thumper conjures a barrage diminishing the Orc force further. Bizzle fishes out Rocky IV and hucks it at Jefffffffffffffff, knocking him out. Catty Batty closes the pincer move from behind them and spares only one Orc, bound by mithril band, for transport back to R&S for debriefing.

Thumper tries to get General Falcone to sign the service report so R&S can depart and invoice. She agrees that R&S has ended her enemies, agrees that Bob is useless (Thumper threw that one in for free), but she does not agree that the oracle is safe in the underground chamber despite the successful repellence of enemies from the one and only disclosed ingress / egress, vis-à-vis the well. If the oracle is so safe, what is all that screaming coming from the well?

The team adjourns to the underground chamber but no oracle is evident and they no longer sense a watcher. A Greycoat is fished from a pool of untreated sewage. In the pocket Thumper reluctantly retrieves a note: “I will be back.” No signature, so that could literally be anybody.

A new P.T.A.T.A. arrives to recover the team and returns them to headquarters. The interrogation unit accepts custody of the Orc detainee and the particulars of the mission, with emphasis on mismanagement by Bob, are related to Rooster.

Rooster barges into the breakroom at Ransom & Salvage world headquarters with a priority two mission. Bizzle reckons priority two means either less urgent or more urgent than priority one, but either way there is no time to sort out the priority schedule because magic is popping and Orcs are hopping at the old Craig-the-Insidious ruin site and it’s up to team Nanstringbatstachbiz to discover the whyfors.

Only the financial experts at BDO could say whether every last penny of R&S revenue goes toward novelty vehicles, but Epi Glottis, the corkscrew-bearded R&S restoration chief, leads the team aboard the Big Uranium Redstone Powered Ship (B.U.R.P.S.), a restored hovering frigate with at least ten undocumented levers and a fearsome bow-mounted tesla coil. The adventurers are introduced to their salt-seasoned parity crewmates: Nanny to Purple, Batty to Green, Strings to Orange, Stache to Blue, Bizzle to Red. Epi Glottis encourages reckless discovery of the ship’s functions and expeditiously excuses himself a safe distance over the horizon.

Nanny, not one to pick up a piano bench, gives lever one a shove. Struts extend from the sides, top, and bottom of the BURPS and an arc of electricity rings the ship. The arc introduces himself as Jeff the Elemental and reveals he has a password which may or may not let him loose to kill everyone on board. Guessing begins immediately and a number of default passwords are quickly ruled out: “guest”, “password”, “linksys”, “”. Strings and Nanny deduce lever one must be constantly managed or, again, risk Jeff killing everyone on board. Even for a flying frigate named BURPS, Jeff seems like a strange feature.

Batty heads below deck and gives lever two a try, opening the port portholes. Less exciting than Jeff, but also far less dangerous. Strings finds the captain’s quarters and locates the operating manual, but the lever page has been inconsiderately torn away. Bizzle gapes at the coil, unable to discern its purpose, and sends Red to bug Nanny just for fun.

Stache finds his berth, A1, and naps amidst an arrangement of twenty green-corded bags. Batty follows him down and locates crates and barrels which might contain provisions and home furnishings. Strings, consulting the manual, commands the ship forward and the BURPS launches toward the ruins. An engraved plate on steering wheel seven proclaims the ship’s legacy identity, Quicksilver, reminding Strings of the Quicksilver painting liberated from Sune’s Muse on a previous mission. That painting featured an air ship, much like the BURPS, named Quicksilver, much like the BURPS, fending off attacking dragons, much like, uh oh. Expectations hang thickly from the synchronicity.

Time passes dragon-free until Strings perceives a fiery noise from aft and spies one large ship and maybe ten attending smaller ships manned by Orcs in pursuit. Bizzle heels to starboard to line up a broadside volley into the enemy fleet. Nanny scoops up a deck orb, in accordance with the operator’s manual, and scores a critical shot destroying a small ship named Bob. Stache uses another deck orb to knock away small ship George’s ballista-aiming Orc and Stache’s enslaved crewman, Blue, uses a deck orb to finish off George. Batty can see from the cannon deck below that the starboard orbs are lined up on the enemy fleet and activates lever four to destroy small ship Billy Bob.

Bizzle continues the starboard turn directly into the onrushing fleet and Red activates lever ten despite the numerous warning labels. The bow coil inhales energy and spits a tremendous wave at the big ship Big Ben. Enemy ballistas answer with flaming bolts and three fires ignite on the  BURPS deck. Strings finds a magic bucket and a 0.5 mil emergency glass he breaks to activate the bucket. By aiming the bucket and commanding “water” to toggle its operation, he extinguishes the flames. He passes the bucket around and the fires are kept at bay. Nanny incinerates Duke and Stache critically hits Weasel, an empty ship careening kamikaze fashion at the BURPS.

When the coil fails to reload immediately, Bizzle swings back to port and the readied starboard orb cannons send another volley. Small ship Sicko crashes to pieces, Nanny destroys retreating Jeffry, and crewman Green wipes out Jean with another volley. Sidney, Bobby, and Big Ben escape.

The last remaining fires are extinguished and the BURPS resumes its mission to the ruins. Batty has a look at the crates and barrels and determines they magically produce whatever sustenance the user requests. An innocent-looking cat materializes, as innocent-looking cats tend to do at supper time, and Nanny determines its name is Tabby.

BURPS lands at the ruins and the union crewmen stay aboard while the team deploys with Tabby. Tabby bites Batty and infects her with Feline Lycanthropy giving her werecat powers and, when transformed, seal point appearance. Confusion abounds when Tabby joins a shield line of Orcs forming in front of the ruins. Did Tabby mean to hurt Catty Batty, or make her more awesome than ever?

Bizzle knows a four quarter Orc when he slices into one and that happens next when both scimitars strike Three into the dust. Strings sings an inspiring ditty to Nanny and lights his lute on fire in the finest tradition of his vocation. Nanny dashes cunningly to the adjacent Orc and manages to skewer him while Batty’s flurry of cat claws drops him, catatonic.

More Orcs and Orogs fill in the shield wall and attack anything that approaches including Batty who happens to be standing where the wall forms. Bizzle reckons Tabby must be in charge and starts wailing on him. Strings strategically hypnotizes a half dozen of the walling Orcs. Nanny, with Batty’s distraction, sneak attacks Pink who never knew what hit him. Stache sprays poison on Blue and Batty kills One with a triple hit before stepping to poisoned Blue. Blue can see the score through poison-drenched eyes and disengages along with Tabby, retreating to hide in the ruins. Nanny runs after Blue and spies a crack of light beneath a pillar. Forced to leave behind the hypnotized Orcs to awaken and fight another day, the team enters the underground complex beneath the pillar.

Two Orogs, Purple and Yellow, guard the two doors from this hidden foyer. A taunting voice, sounding a little like Craig were he not already for sure, without a doubt, positively dead, welcomes the party’s return and a couple of flame gouts spring up just to accentuate the ambience. The Orogs withdraw seemingly in fear of their own public address system and Bizzle pursues them to the door. Bizzle can’t perceive anything beyond the doorway until Nanny opens the door as uncondescendingly as possible.

Beyond the door a goopy, acidy, green pool waits uninvitingly. A door creaks open and a girly scream follows a green flash. Ominous laughter follows that, and then General Kitté emerges with two major Orcs. Strings, mindful of the mission, asks Kitté for an inventory of magic on site for his report. Kitté gesticulates at the surroundings and declares this the Lair of the Dynasty of Death. “Dynasty of Death!” chant the Orcs. For a better explanation the adventurers must meet with the master right through those doors. Now. He’s waiting.

Faced with the obvious choice of proceeding or leaving, the adventurers use their soft skills to guide them. Strings’s insight informs him these guys are either lying or telling the truth. Nanny keenly perceives the localized magic emanates from a person or a thing, not the lair itself. Stache sizes up General Kitté and figures the group could definitely take him in a fair fight. Batty’s insight informs her that Kitté believes he speaks the truth, that the master really is waiting impatiently.

General Kitté escorts the willing party in but only to a point, refusing to go further. That sounds pretty fishy but narrative momentum carries the party to the top of a staircase and they find themselves teleported to the top of a mountain, standing some distance from Lich Craig the Insidiously Undead. Craig pulls back his hood and sleeves revealing some of his ill skeletal lich appendages for which he blames the R&S team.

While Strings viciously mocks Craig about not being himself when he’s hungry and Stache calls a storm to the mountain with a glorious lightning bolt striking Craig, Bizzle and Nanny dash at him with some difficulty across the terrain and Batty ninja shadow steps to him. Craig sends a fireball to burn Stache and Strings but misses Batty with his fancy flaming sword of green.

With Nanny, Bizzle, and Batty surrounding his person, Craig uses his legendary disruption of life. All three remain standing but universally agree the legendary action is indeed impressively disruptive to life.

Nanny sneaks an attack, Stache encores his lightning storm, and Batty critically places the point of her rapier right in the Lich’s constitution and strength chakras. Craig extends his bony hand and grabs Nanny’s neck to paralyze her with his touch, but bardic inspiration and her uncanny dodging allow her to narrowly avoid paralysis.

Craig jumps across to another boulder and appears to disappear. Strings replenishes Nanny’s bardic inspiration and his own health with an R&S brand healing potion, now with antioxidant cinnamon. Nanny enjoys a refreshing R&S healing potion as well. Bizzle jumps to Craig’s last observed location and makes a perfect cut which nothing visible or invisible could have possibly evaded. Stache drops his finest bolt of lightning in the same location but it’s Strings who glimpses the shadow from that bolt and points out to Batty where Craig lurks invisibly. She drops him.

Bizzle collects Craig’s head believing for some reason that a lich can’t return without a head, but he doesn’t find the green sword to loot for the mission scribe. Bizzle hears, “This is not the last you’ll see of me!”

+ + + + + + + + + +

Big Uranium Redstone Powered Ship (B.U.R.P.S.) Revisions and Addendums
1 Extend arc masts and summon Jeff the Elemental. Note: maintain lever to prevent inadvertant release and mayhem
2 Toggle port portholes on cannon deck
3 Toggle starboard orbic cannon volley
4 Starboard orbic cannon volley
5 Port orbic cannon volley
6 Summon handheld orbic cannons
7 Steering
8 Energy deflector shields
9 [untested]
10 Tesla coil attack

At the Warren, Rooster announces another Priority One Mission and calls the rooster roster: Thumper, Nanny, Bizzle, Strings, Batty, and of course Beard. Beard, indisposed after getting into the Salvage Bars, will be covered by his identical cousin, Theodore “Stache” Nigel. Transport for the mission to recover an item answering to “Fred”, stolen by Orcs from an anonymous client, will be the Kowalish Apparatus Thingy (KAT), a barrel-shaped, crablike conveyance. With no time for training or orientation, the team pile into the KAT and begin randomly operating the ten control levers to learn their functions with only some damage to the surrounding Warren structure:

1 Extend / retract legs and tail
2 Front shutters toggle
3 Side shutters toggle
4 Extend / retract claws
5 Attack / grapple
6 Forward / reverse
7 Steering left / right
8 Lights
9 ???
10 Rear hatch toggle

Thumper, consulting his faithful companion Monty, takes ahold of levers 6 and 7 and the team steams off to the olde graveyard where the orc thieves reportedly hold Fred.

Nanny peers out the KAT’s open shutters and surveys the graveyard. She reports graves, and central statue of a reaper wraith with glowing blue eyes, and Orcs standing around battleboar-drawn carts encircling a distressed unicorn caught in a magic suppression field. “Help!” it pleas telepathically. Bizzle flashes the lights and yells for the Orcs to cease and desist, but they merely scoff at the approaching KAT and its lever flipping occupants.

Zombies rise from the graves surrounding the rescuers so Batty swings the KAT around in a bootleg turn while Strings deploys the claws to grapple zombie Fourteen. Stache fireballs Twentytwo, Ten, and Nine re-deadening them with fire. Fourteen breaks in half attempting to escape the claws as Nanny swings the KAT around for another grapple while Bizzle backs it toward the imperiled unicorn. Four impacts outside halt the KAT in place.

Thumper looks out the side shutters for the hitch and declares that four transparent ghost worm suckerless octopus squid tentacles have wrapped the KAT. Batty, inspired by some topical poetry from Strings, gets busy stabbing them through the shutters while the zombies ineffectively lurch into the armored exterior.

Once the orc procession withdraws with the unicorn Fred, the tentacles release and the zombies submerge back into the ground. Nanny spins the KAT to pursue Fred. Thumper intuits some significance about the conspicuous statue and turns the KAT back around toward it. But, in a microcosm of society, the myopic lever-pulling monkey-see-monkey-follow reaction of his thick crewmates overwhelms his thoughtfully strategic 19/20 planning and they make for the olde ruins, found on a map in the fantasy glove box, instead. Backward.

At the ruins, the KAT scuttles up silently, courtesy of Batty, on the ten Orcs loitering around outside the ruins. Batty opens with a crossbow bolt into Purple One and he winces in Orcish, but remembers his leadership training and parlays the wince into a proper warcry. Strings hypnotizes Green Two and Green Three which inspires Nanny to higher achievement. Stache advances toward the charging battleboars who begin battering the KAT as steam lines rupture and the armor dents and cracks. Purple One slams his great axe into the rear hatch.

Nanny and Bizzle use the claw to subdivide Green Six while Thumper hits the automated flood lights and makes an assault landing astride Monty out the rear hatch. He lands near a treeline where three concealed Orc-mounted battleboars surround and assail him mercilessly, but he does uncover a previously unobserved tent where he can make out the silhouette of Fred. Batty follows him out and, keen for her own ride, jumps upon the back of Green Four’s battleboar. Perceiving Batty’s immanent predicament, Strings mocks Green Four, so discombobulating him that he fumbles trying to knock Ninja Batty off the battleboar as she shoulder rolls him sailing off, leaving Batty the proud new owner of one low mileage battleboar. Nanny’s boots, made for walking, take her to Purple One; Nanny’s short swords, made for mincing, reduce him to pâté.  Stache and Bizzle KAT claw Green Five in twain.

Thumper has the three ambushers right where they want him so he casts a jump spell and sails off toward the ruin, landing safely in the company of a fresh wave of newly revealed Orcs. Batty commands her battleboar, christened Piggy, and charges Purple Two. Strings hypnotizes the ambushers and their battleboars while Stache, observing Batty’s fun, hops his own battleboar and uses it to kill Green Four.

Orcish commands emanate from the tent and the battleboar orcs all back away from the KAT. A short fellow with a long nose emerges from the tent with Fred.

“Well, well, well. I was hoping they’d send more R&S agents.” Strings recognizes Craig the Insidious, a very powerful half-Halfling-half-Gnome mage exiled from R&S for making knockoff greycoats. Insidious Craig goes on to explain his entire plan of using Fred to lure R&S agents to his burgeoning Orc army for their greycoats. He doesn’t even WANT a unicorn.

Thumper retorts with his own rousing soliloquy explaining in no uncertain terms that these Greycoats would never surrender and Craig would never get their equipment. Never.

Bizzle offers to surrender his coat immediately if Craig will allow him to drive it over the 60 feet or so in the KAT, claw first. Strings interprets this as some kind of ruse and offers a persuasive, yet deceptive, supporting argument for this course of action while he also boards the KAT. Nanny knows good momentum when she sees it and joins them.

Craig, eager for the three greycoats and confident in his very powerful spellcasting, waits while the KAT slowly approaches and Nanny closes the grappling claw on him. He seems unconcerned even when Stache charges him with a battleboar, merely chuckling to himself about all the sorrow and death these adventurers will soon experience at his hand. But then Batty casts silence on him and his smugness withers.

Nanny and Strings hop out of the KAT and Thumper hops at Craig, lance first. He calls for Fred to stay and maybe help, but Fred sends back telepathically, “Later, suckers!” as he vanishes into the woods. Even Orcs know a silence spell when they see a monk cast it so they all hurl javelins at Batty to break her concentration. She dodges some but not all yet manages to hold concentration on the spell as waves of battleboars crash into her and she is surrounded by Orcs.

Thumper charges at Craig and invents jousting, a new sport of knocking Orcs off their battleboars. Stache gives that a try but the attempt goes wrong and he flips off his battleboar and into the cage cart. The unseated Orcs remount and charge Batty over and over but remain unsuccessful at breaking her concentration while Nanny and Bizzle heap double damage on Craig hoping to stop him before he can find the opportunity to make good on his threats. With that in mind, he slips free from the grappling claw and runs into the midst of his hypnotized ambushers as Nanny and Bizzle swing at his retreat.

Stache, from the inert safety of his cage, takes advantage of the pile of Orcs and battleboars around Batty and puts a fireball right on them dropping 6 green Orcs and damaging the battleboars. Batty, her fan club in greasy Orc flames, catches up to Craig and rains a flurry of blows on him, slaying him just as he escapes the zone of silence.

While Thumper continues separating Orc from battleboar, Strings turns his considerable charm on Fred who rebuffs his persuasive advances until Strings begins to cry. So moved is Fred that he gallops into the fray and horn-spikes an Orc right off the battlefield into the woods beyond. Thumper’s lance mops up the last of the resistance and Stache gives the hypnotized ambushers a farewell fireball. Only Purple Two remains and he is ornery to the end. Batty puts a bolt in him after accidentally shooting the steaming KAT. Bizzle misses him with Rocky II. Nanny pulls a dagger from her belt and throws it right into Purple Two’s throat, which as it turns out he needed intact to continue living.

The KAT, crippled by the massive battleboar damage, can travel only half speed. Thumper lashes up the battleboars into a draft team, led by Monty and Fred, to pull the KAT back to the Warren where they get an earful for allowing the damage. But the mission was otherwise a complete success with the bonus achievement of one less Craig the Insidious, and besides the damage is easily compensated by the vast quantities of battlebacon.

 

The FHRTT delivers the recovery team to the garden outside the three story museum. Casing the exterior, there are no windows and but one door as promised by the mission profile, an indictment of the deplorable fire codes in Baldur’s Gate. Nanny keenly perceives the door is already ajar so Bizzle peeks in and gives the all-clear to Strings who slips in to find two slain museum guards, odd since typically a dead guard would take a sick day and have a living guard cover for him. Strings hums a little tune to inspire the team to new heights of achievement as it appears the mission has gone pear-shaped even before their arrival.

This entry lobby features a statue of Oghma, four doors that continue to the interior, and a faint trace of poison gas Nanny senses and Beard disavows. Beard, never at a loss for something inexplicably appropriate to do, casts a detect poison spell. Bizzle checks the bodies for the magical passkeys anticipated for arcane security in the gallery. He locates stones mounted to belt worn leather thongs on each guard and palms one to Strings, but also notices matching ligature bruising as though necklaces were yanked off each.

Beard, breathing through his beard, eases out into the gallery hall where the concentration of poison is a bit higher and determines the substance causes massive damage and obscuration. He can make out another prone body across the hall near a grand staircase up to the second level. Nanny scouts for traps and spots paintings displayed in a gallery on the right so the party moves toward them hoping to find Quicksilver and call it an early night.

Nanny realizes the paintings have all been cut out of their frames and also that two Gnolls have cut out of the darkness with thrumming longbows aimed at Strings who deftly catches one arrow using nothing but his lung. Beard, observing the complete lack of collateral damage vis-a-vis missing paintings, launches his signature fireball at the Gnolls obliterating them to ash in a single conflagration, or at least that’s how he envisions it would happen but instead lets go of the fireball too soon and it fizzles harmlessly. Bizzle dashes up to Two distracting him so Nanny can sneak in an attack while Strings mocks One viciously making him lose confidence and some health. Two makes an impressive move allowing him to miss both Bizzle and Nanny in a single attack and One, undoubtedly trained by the same master, misses Beard twice. Bizzle sinks Destra into Two and sinks Sinistra into the gallery wall where he reluctantly abandons it to flank himself between One and Two. Strings, Beard, and Nanny focus their efforts on Two and he departs the living world mocked, thorn whipped, and poly-sliced. While Bizzle and Nanny tag team One, Beard takes up watch into the gallery hall to ensure the ruckus has not attracted unwanted attention and Strings pulls on Sinistra to free it from the wall. Suddenly pulled free, the unbalanced scimitar swings back and strikes Nanny in a freak accident. One is quickly subdued and knocked unconscious until Nanny can tie him up and begin the helm of telepathy interrogation.

The following is harvested by Nanny from One’s thoughts, despite the Gnoll’s defiant and insulting mouth:
He is working for R&S’s competition, Darkwater Cartage.
His organization is presently looting the second floor.
The stolen paintings are still onsite, collected into backpacks.
The pilfered necklaces, likely the arcane passkeys, are in the possession of Dingo and Mutt.
This particular Gnoll has many pups at home who require sustenance, orthodontics, and tuition, but he would like to go on living anyway if he can manage to avoid professional censure.

One is gagged and shoved into a dark alcove to quietly contemplate his life choices, along with his less fortunate cohort Two likely contemplating his own weakness in the cleansing torture of Yeenoghu.

Just real quickly before leaving, Strings has a look at a large tapestry of a King and Queen left behind by the raiders. He thinks he might be growing fond of the piece, but then changes his mind at the last moment. Beard doesn’t know a lot about enthralling art, but he knows it when he stares at it deliberately, and that is exactly what happens next. Bizzle tries to wrestle him away, but then sees things Beard’s way; this really is a great tapestry. Strings suggests otherwise to impressionable Bizzle and changes his mind. Strings and Nanny exert a significant effort and numerous spells to dissuade Beard from the tapestry by force, by illusion, and by charm and eventually compel him to turn away. The piece seems like an attractive nuisance for public display, but there is no accounting for taste.

Moving back to the main hall immediately adjacent, it becomes apparent that all the display cases have been emptied except one featuring an obviously valuable scepter prominently located in the center of the room next to a dead Gnoll with a high concentration of poison gas. Strings steps up on the platform for a closer look at this cunning trap which he and everyone else in a 20’ radius enjoys: cloud kill. Everyone staggers out of the fog and up the stairs, alive if not well. Especially Bizzle who has prepared his entire existence to endure cloud kill.

Creeping along the left wall of the second level, the team finds nothing but pilfered display cases except one with a golden egg remaining. No takers this time. Bizzle reports hearing elephants eating popcorn at a string orchestra rehearsal up ahead, but Occam’s Dagger reduces his credibility with the others. Transformed into a bat, Beard uses his un-Bizzle senses to hear footsteps from the left, a hall displaying several completely inert predatory animals, and footsteps from the right, a hallway devoid of visible inert threats. Nanny leads the others forward, locating no traps until she reaches the corner of the animal room where she easily identifies an arcana trap across the threshold to the left and two arrows sticking out her backside shot from a trio of Gnolls emerging from darkness to the right.

Beard reverts to Gnome form and sends his signature fireball back at the three perfectly grouped Gnolls, badly injuring them as the adventurers heal up for the new confrontation and take off for the offenders. A second longbow volley catches Bizzle but Nanny returns a short bow arrow sending One to the kennel in the sky and the two remainders divide in opposite directions. Everyone ducks off the main hall until something happens, and that something is two figures, one Human and the other Gnoll, emerge from around the giant drake that forms the centerpiece of the animal display behind them.

“Well! If it isn’t J. J. Guy Mister”, opens Beard, hopefully stunning the new contenders at least as much as his own party who recognize Dingo and Mutt, senior associates of Darkwater Cartage, when they see them. Dingo reckons no profit from losing more Gnoll henchmen and offers to negotiate a peace for whatever it is R&S might be seeking, as long as it doesn’t conflict with DC’s acquisition of 100% of everything. Beard indicates they might be interested in a certain painting called Quicksilver but only because his cousin failed art school and needs some cheering up. Mutt nudges Dingo, indicating the flying-boat-with-circling-dragons masterpiece in his bag. Strings reckons Beard has softened Dingo’s calm enough and asks Dingo what he wants for the Quicksilver. Dingo wants to leave. Nanny’s helm tells her the favorable negotiations are nevertheless inching toward violence so Strings agrees in principle but defers to group consensus. Dingo and Mutt make a good faith offer by placing Quicksilver into the giant drake’s completely inert maw and walking out, pointedly tripping the arcane trap on their way. Strings and Nanny can’t see how this successful parle could possibly go wrong, so Strings makes Beard invisible as he takes eagle form to make a quick retrieval of the painting. While he does so, the Gnoll that Bizzle has cornered grows suddenly agitated so that Nanny has to put him down.

As Beard reaches the animal display at the end of the hall, he can see that the features are coming to life, and the purpose of the arcane trap is revealed. The giant drake tosses the painting off in a random direction, to the edge of the room where Beard will have the most difficulty getting at it, and launches at full chat for Strings who notices the approaching danger and emphatically urges, over his rapidly retreating shoulder, that Bizzle and Nanny should immediately proceed to the emergency exit. As he reaches the nearby staircase, Strings finds the missing last longbow Gnoll from earlier and utters a tersely vicious mockery, killing him with the insult. Nanny falls in behind Strings and they beat feet for the exit with Bizzle holding back only just enough to keep the drake’s undivided attention on him.

Meanwhile, at the other end, most of the animals take no notice of invisible Eagle Beard landing on the rolled Quicksilver, but one keen wolf does detect this presence and pauses to investigate, somehow missing the huge bear lurching toward him attacking everything in his path. Without pausing to mourn the myopic wolf, Eagle Beard snatches up the Quicksilver and retraces his path to the first floor where he encounters an eagle’s greatest enemy: doors.

With proper dramatic timing, the R&S and DC principals all arrive in the entry lobby where Dingo and Mutt rudely attempt to bully the team out of the Quicksilver and must be reminded they are the party who placed the valuable painting irretrievably into the mouth of a giant drake. As it so happens, invisible Gnome Beard is just now invisibly stashing the invisible Quicksilver into his invisible Greycoat before Strings drops the invisibility spell.

About that time, the drake bursts into the room menacingly. Mutt coolly drops it with one hit, zero efforts. “You’re welcome.”

R&S gather themselves outside for the teleport where Bizzle, trying his best to be as cool as Mutt, offers, “Hey. Hey, you guys wanna ride with us?”

“Thanks, kid, we’ll do our own thing.”

“Okay, then, smell ya la–” and Bizzle activates the helm a moment too soon before he can finish executing his pithy cut, making him look like a dork.