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.