Dungeons & Dragons

In the quiet post combat moments of the darkened ruins deep within the Chult jungle, the group dedicates some time to investigation and contemplation. There are no artifacts for Van Fostern in the ruins, nor treasures for payment beyond what Slick loots from the grungs. 

The treasures themselves, Tatters reckons, are smothered in a non-magic psionic energy. Bizzle gets a rare moment of insight, envisioning the inhabitants of the unruined village suddenly departing without rational cause. He tracks the grungs and finds the path orthogonal to the group’s travel is often patrolled. 

Shroom looks for mushrooms but wouldn’t ignore an artifact if he sees one. He finally finds a shelf mushroom. Satisfied, he resumes harvesting grung poison for Tricksy’s specimen jars. Tricksy doubles back stealthily and attempts to spy their persistent pursuer from a tall tree. She senses the pursuer is right behind her in the tree. She sends Knit X circling around, but Knit X buzzes negative contact. Heeding Tatter’s warning about the possessive treasure, Bizzle and Tricksy offload gold and rubies onto Bill the mule. Slick would prefer to hang on to his loots, thankyouverymuch.

The party camps off the road and divides up watches. On second watch, Shroom hears a patrol of three and wakes each cohort with a probing fungal finger in the face. Tatters whispers that maybe they should be quiet and let the patrol pass. Bizzle nods affirmatively but springs out of the jungle at the three grungs anyway.

Two green grungs get stabby and the red grung casts a growth spell on nearby vegetation. Shroom shoves through the dense growth and, declaring loudly his intent to avoid bathing, primally savages a green grung. Slick retrieves a potion of flying and sails over the plant wall, charging at the red grung with readied axe. Tatters dispels the growth and strolls through, slinging firebolts. Tricksy adds her arrows to the injured green grung. Bizzle keeps contact with the red grung, but a botched swing sends a scimitar tumbling into the jungle. Bizzle runs after it. The red grung attempts to retreat, but Slick drops axe first from above. Bizzle rejoins, knocking the red grung out nonlethally. Bizzle sits on the red grung and secures it with mithril banding. Tatters and Tricksy take out the first green grung and advance on the second. Tatters dusts off his quarterstaff, hoping to knock out a second prisoner, but unbathed Shroom cuts in with primal savagery and slays the last green grung.

Tatters detects the red grung’s thoughts while Bizzle questions the uncomprehending creature in common. The language barrier doesn’t matter because red grung only thinks about all the treasures that Slick is busily gathering up. Bizzle shows red grung the dead troll. Where is that dead troll’s gold treasure? Tatters probes deeper thoughts and sees a robed, tentacle-faced creature with an enormous hoard of treasure. Detect thoughts fades at thirty feet so Bizzle measures out that length of robe, tethers the red grung to Tatters, and removes the red grung’s bindings. The red grung leaps into the air, yanking Tatters off his feet. Once the red grung tires out, Tatters uncurses it, gives it some water, and sends it on its way. Tatters then uncurses Slick and suggests he transfer all his cursed treasure to Bill the mule.

The party camps uneventfully and, thinking more clearly in the morning, realizes their grung encounters have occurred on concentric patrol paths, suggesting that they are moving directly toward the hot center of Chult weirdness. No one would be surprised to find a tentacle-faced creature with a hoard of gold in that center.

Later that day, the party approaches circular ruins. The road is blocked by a large maul-wielding man, a druid, and a ranger. Shroom hails them and proposes they be well met, but Shroom is met only with bland aloofness. Shroom takes offense at the shun and accesses his symbiotic entity. Slick takes a couple steps away from Shroom’s new and improved death scent while taking measure of the three road blockers. He notes they are wearing crude jewelry. Tatters dons his helm of telepathy and suggests the three might remove their cursed jewelry, but they are too busy thinking about a clear and placid lake to pay any heed. Another thought breaks in on the channel, impressed by Tatters’s awareness, and damages Tatters’s mind with feedback.

Bizzle charges the maul man with a surge, but accidentally hucks a scimitar into the ruins. Tricksy starts plugging the maul man with arrows. Shroom natures out and pursues the ranger with his warmushroom and halo spores. Slick sneaks a fatal axe attack on the ranger. Tatters selects the tiger-shifted druid and firebolts it back to druid-shifted druid. The druid shifts to gorilla form and pummels Slick. Shroom smashes the gorilla back into druid with his warmushroom and then puffs a halo of spores that unkills the druid into Shroom’s pet zombie.

Bizzle runs to retrieve the flung scimitar and encounters a tentacle-faced man also hoping to collect the scimitar. The tentacle-faced man retreats out of view. Bizzle yells out that tentacle-faced man is escaping, but his pursuit is stopped by a closed steel door.

A veteran man leads two orcs out of the ruins, flanking the party. Shroom takes out one orc and zombies the other just in time to replace the druid zombie that the veteran man slays. All weapons turn on the veteran man and Shroom zombies him, putting him up by one zombie in the exchange.

Tricksy, Slick, Tatters, and Bizzle lounge in the warren getting to know new R&S agent transfer Shroom, a likeable, fun guy lurking somewhere in a druidic cloud of unbathed spores. Rooster emerges from his office with rotund Baron Flocculant Van Fostern after an hour of unsuccessful negotiations. Whatever Fostern has in mind, R&S can’t provide a fixed scope or basis of cost, but Rooster consents to allowing agents to contract independently with Fostern, completely off book and sans standard death benefits package R&S provides to its employees.

Fostern proposes a share of the legendary immeasurable treasure of the Chult jungles in exchange for any and all recovered artifacts. Shroom eagerly agrees, but Tricksy negotiates an additional 500 gp, each, mobilization fee just in case the treasure is immeasurably small. Fostern agrees to the 2500 gp cash front much too quickly through death rattling choking fits of coughing. It seems Fostern has one foot over a barrel and the other on a banana peel. Fostern provides maps to the legendary ruins from which no other adventurer has returned. A ship is arranged and the party sails to Fort Beluarian, a run-down outpost of Baldur’s Gate at the edge of the Chult jungles.

The party heads to the nearest tavern, named Thrice for the number of its rebuildings, for a reconnoiter of the whole lost treasure situation. Charismatic Slick chats up some Baldur’s Gate militia. The soldier recognizes yet another treasure hunter when he sees Slick, yet another victim for the brain flukes that invariably bore into the brains of treasure hunting adventurers. Still, a demoralized Baldur’s Gate militiaman could retire in luxury with one of those plate-size rubies the soldier has seen.

Tatters knows all about brain flukes, ingested from drinking tainted water. He fills his bag of holding with waterskins and rations for the journey. Sundry other provisioning is made and the group sets off into the jungle where they soon meet adventurer Mercer and his mule Bill coming the other way. Well into the conversation about ancient ruins, artifacts, and plate sized rubies, Mercer’s head explodes from excess brain fluke. The party invokes finders keepers acquiring Bill the mule. Slick helps himself to Mercer’s boots.

A few days into their journey the party comes across an abandoned pack, left as though its owner had tripped and then mysteriously vanished. Slick sees no traps or obvious danger so Tricksy opens it, revealing a large ruby, two gold nuggets, and a couple of hungry looking purple worms. Shroom hammers a worm into purple paste with his petrified mushroom warhammer. Slick axes up the other worm into purple julienne. Keen-sensed ranger Tricksy hears incoherent whispers and senses the party is being watched. Tatters checks out the abandoned loot, but notices nothing amiss. Bizzle claims the giant ruby as their first progress payment and notices the warm sensation of happiness that undoubtedly accompanies the sudden acquisition of great wealth. The whispers unnecessarily encourage Bizzle to acquire more treasure. Shroom is visibly disappointed that no fungus is among the treasure and swabs out his nostrils to purge any purple worm brain flukes that might be in there.

Tricksy is pretty sure the group is being followed. Tatters advances cautiously and sees eyes peering back. The eyes, and seven similar pairs, leap out at the party in the form of cute little grungs trying to stab and poison them.

Grungs surround isolated, stoneskinned Tatters and try to lasso him. Shroom begins spewing clouds of fungi from his mouth which grosses out his coworkers, but the grung actually seem to enjoy the poisonous scent. The party fights its way through to Tatters. Shroom bites into the head of a grung with primal savagery and the few remaining grungs leap into the jungle.

Shroom carefully harvests four jars of poison for Tricksy’s arsenal of mischief. Slick, Tatters, and Bizzle loot crude necklaces of gold nuggets and rough gemstones from each slain grung. They feel pretty good about being wealthier and try to ignore the sense that something is watchfully following. The incoherent whispers persist, but only when they aren’t thinking about it.

Hours later, the party finally arrives at the ruins indicated by Fostern’s maps. Slick notices three little green lumps on the trail. Tatters moves closer to investigate and notices they bite Shroom when Shroom recklessly runs through them. Shroom haloes spores back at them. Tricksy runs up a tree with her shortbow ready. She encounters a grung in the tree hiding with his shortbow ready. Tricksy gets the drop on the grung and knocks him out of the tree with a couple of quick arrows.

Grungs emerge from all around, this time accompanied by a jungle troll. Tatters thinks it’s pretty weird for grungs and trolls to socialize. Tatters and Shroom clean out the grungs while Slick, Tricksy, and Bizzle confront the troll. The troll, trying to reach for Tricksy in the tree, claws, bites, and shoves aside his assailants despite Bizzle’s galline tauntings. Attacks land on the troll, but it regenerates until Tatters hits it with a fireball. Tricksy’s arrows slay the troll, and the last of the grungs are finished off.

Tricksy examines a large gold ingot crudely embedded into the troll’s chest as though through self-mutilation. She pops the valuable treasure out. Others collect necklaces from the slain grungs. The party’s attention turns to the ruins.

Tatters figures the ruins weren’t taken by force or anything like that, just abandoned for no obvious reason. He wonders whether it is related to the strange interactions between grungs and the troll, and what that has to do with the commonality of their gold and gemstone treasures.

They have had better days. The good faith mission to pay ransom to the unseelie fey for safe return of Trilosso Limburger’s kidnapped infant was on-track until a detestable team of Darkwater gnolls operating on behalf of an unknown client pear-shaped the entire deal by springing a trap. Now the fey are ooze and gnolls are whooping threateningly outside the keep. Worst of all, Bizzle’s helm of teleportation (PHRRT), by which they arrived at the remote keep, is damaged. Ranger Tricksy will have to guide them back through perils known and unknown.

A quick search of the room gets Bizzle a magical belt of two charges and gets Gnome a dagger of silver from the oozing fey. Some dead Darkwater gnolls have a meatstick each.

Slick grabs the unharmed Limburger baby in its basket. Bizzle grabs the unpaid ransom. Tricksy takes to the ceiling. Gnome gets stunned by a voice on a cold wind that assures the party it will not survive this treachery. Stone skeletons spring from the keep floor.

Tricksy and Bizzle start to clear the hallway out while Slick and Gnome take out the skeletons threatening the baby. Gnome casts orbiting Melph’s minute meteorites and declares he am pyromancer, spraying empowered meteorites and scorching rays from his jar wherever Tricksy hasn’t already left dead skeletons. The path is clear and the pyromantic heat is dissipated by a ramping cold wind shoving them down the hallway toward the exit.

Bizzle cautiously peers left and right where the keep opens into a courtyard. Gnolls. Gnome, aided by the cold wind, sails past Bizzle as readied gnoll arrows crisscross his showmanship. Meteorites and scorching rays kiss the four gnolls waiting to ambush them. Tricksy picks off the wounded gnolls from the outer wall.

Slick hangs safely back with the baby. The cold hallway wind pulls the baby basket out of Slick’s grasp and back up the hallway even while pushing Slick out. Slick scrambles upwind and catches the basket. Gnome suspects KK Girl Missus of this trick. Everyone else suspects Gnome may have a loose toggle bolt.

Ranger Tricksy surveys the landscape and chooses a forest route rather than marsh or hills. They are all her favorite terrain, but the forest, although the longest route to a nearby town, may offer cover for their escape. Or cover for malevolent forest plants and fey.

The team advances cautiously through the forest with Bizzle on point looking for traps, Tricksy guiding them along keenly aware of danger, Slick safeguarding the baby, and Gnome bouncing conspicuously around looking for rotting fruit and twigs for his Tricksy voodoo doll project. Tricksy becomes aware of a tree waiting to ambush them up ahead. Wood woads emerge from trees along the path and bludgeon Slick to the point he has to down his salvage bar. Quicklings zip across striking at Gnome, almost faster than he can give them impromptu names. Signpost the giant tree person sidles up and punches Gnome in the back of the head knocking him out.

The wood woads and quicklings recede into the forest. Bizzle stands on Gnome to force feed him a healing potion. Gnome critically immolates Signpost who quickly burns himself down after some arrows from tree topped Tricksy. Slick watches the wood woads meld into trees so he logically sets a tree afire with his torch. Gnome notes that he is not the one who has first ignited the forest and therefore can’t possibly be culpable if and when he lights the forest even more on fire. He scorching rays killing one of the wood woads when they emerge to attack Slick and Tricksy. The quicklings continue to zip around, and Bizzle manages to kill one accidentally by holding a scimitar out when it goes by. So that’s what they look like. Gnome stomps at the quicklings.

The party resumes forward movement despite the continued attacks, trading hits whenever the wood woads and quicklings present an opportunity. Bizzle rounds a turn in the path and finds a pair of gnolls directionally indicated by the arrows protruding from him. Gnome, informed by his belief that explosions can solve all problems great and small, sends a massive fireball back at the gnomes killing both and a third no one even knows about yet. Through the smoke and flames of burning gnolls emerges none other than Mutt, strongman of Darkwater. The hazy outline of Dingo can be seen even farther back. A couple of gnolls approach behind the party, but Tricksy and Bizzle quickly slay them.

Gnome attempts to reduce Mutt to teacup size, but Mutt shrugs it off. Gnome immolates Mutt. Slick draws his rapier, ready to defend the baby. Mutt smacks Slick with a flail, paralyzing him. Mutt snatches the baby and runs for waiting Dingo. Bizzle chomps his salvage bar and action surges to dash in front of retreating Mutt. Gnome does some weird magic stuff and blasts a pair of empowered fireballs at Dingo. Tricksy puts arrows into Mutt’s marked retreating backside. Dingo eats a meatstick of hangering and advances to smack Bizzle in back of his head. Mutt tosses the baby basket into the forest toward one of several growing fires and charges Gnome, knocking him out. Mutt swings his flail up at Tricksy in the tree.

Bizzle goes after the baby basket and grabs it away from the fire. At the urging of voices vaguely from the direction of his scimitars, he activates the belt of two charges looted from the unseelie fey. Bizzle blinks into the ethereal plan where he and the baby can safely watch Dingo and Mutt exchange beatings with Slick and Tricksy while Gnome enjoys slipping into death’s peaceful embrace.

Mutt chases after Bizzle, but finds neither Bizzle nor baby. Mutt screams in a frustrated way very unlike Mutt. Dingo breaks a sword across Slick’s armor and also screams in a frustrated way very unlike Mutt. They break away in retreat.

Slick stands on Gnome to force feed him a healing potion. Gnome can’t help but launch a couple of meteorites to chase Dingo already disappearing into the forest. A long forgotten Quickling slashes by Gnome nudging him closer to death’s door yet again. When the situation is safe, Bizzle returns to the material plane with the baby.

Tricksy leads the bedraggled team to the hamlet of Yoriick where they take a short rest until dark. Slick gets directions from a tavern, and they steal a couple of horses. They ride back to R&S headquarters and file a mission report with Rooster. It’s a double win by any measure, but Rooster is irritable anyway. Rooster needs a vacation.

In full swing of the annual R&S Winter Solstice Festival, designated duty officer Curly Three escorts an outsider into the party and over to Rooster. Rooster listens to the stranger for a moment before summoning his four most capacitated agents, Tricksy, Slick, Beard, and Bizzle, away from the barrel of solstice uther.

The gnome stranger hails from Iceville, a town known to R&S because of its beloved annual visitor, R&S brethren Kringle, who swapped his greycoat for a red coat to bring presents to Iceville’s boys and girls. The stranger reports that Kringle did not make his usual Kringlefest visit this year, and Rooster wants the team to find out why. White coats of cold resistance are issued in place of the usual warm weather greycoats. The white coat looks perfect over Slick’s Winter Solstice dress.

The party will begin by locating a keep, a light industrial toy manufactory operated by Kringle, in the forest outside Iceville. The location is secret, and the keep is magically shrouded to ensure it remains so. Today’s whimsical transport is a flying sleigh drawn by eight flying reindeer who will deliver the team to the nearby forest without complication.

. . .

The first thing Slick notices stepping out of the sleigh onto the frozen forest lake is a foul odor from the north. Beard dashes for the source of the stench and runs into a yeti. The yeti claws at Beard and paralyzes him with a chilling gaze. Beard’s beard badger, Booboo, emerges upon Beard’s head to survey the situation and booboos at the sight of the yeti. Slick charges into the fray with his axe and Tricksy runs up a tree firing her shortbow. Bizzle, last out of the sleigh, evacuates the reindeer by engaging the autopilot, a plywood gnome tied to the reins. Bizzle dashes around the back of the yeti giving Slick a sneak attack that kills it.

Slick dashes to a gnawed-on commoner dying in the forest and feeds him a healing potion. He is Lars, and he has come from Iceville also to search for missing Kringle. Lars explains that 300 years ago Kringle defeated a demon who kept Iceville in perpetual darkness to feed off the citizens’ fears. Lars infers from the team’s size and attire that they are Kringle’s helpers. Beard so emphatically praises Kringle, his 32nd most favorite boss, that Lars loses consciousness.

Bizzle investigates an abandoned sleigh of the same make as the one by which they arrived, but this one is tricked out for Kringlefest. The steel reindeer harness has been snapped. Reindeer guts are splattered up in the surrounding trees. Beard transforms into a reindeer to get a sense of what the reindeer were doing or where they came from. Ranger Tricksy can easily discern hoof tracks left by the arriving reindeer as well as promising boot tracks left by a rotund gnome abandoning the sleigh.

Tricksy leads the party in pursuit of the survivor along snowy trails. Bizzle carries Lars. Reindeer Beard launches into a full gallop across a snowy clearing until he’s pummelled with snowballs by snowmen who meld invisibly back into the snow. Tricksy discerns the snowmen from her treetop firing position and points their locations out to the party by lobbing pots of boiling water, melting one snowman. A snowman pops out next to Slick and ice claws him. Slick lights a torch and jams it into the snowman. Tricksy’s suturefly, Knit IV, helps Bizzle rearrange Slick’s attacker into a pile of snow. Snowmen surround Beard and knock him out of reindeer form with snowballs and ice claws. Beard tries to flank around to line up burning hands, but he’s knocked out.

The party scatters, hitting whatever snowmen they manage to glimpse. A snowball critically hits Bizzle in his ACL. Beard regains consciousness and casts a wall of fire which melts a snowman. Tricksy hucks alchemist fire, melting a snowman, but her next throw ignites a tree instead. Bizzle helps Slick chop down his snowman attacker. Tricksy steams another snowman with a boiling water pot. Slick finishes off the last snowman with a jab from his flaming torch.

Beard douses the flaming tree with a well-placed tidal wave. Slick spots an object in a snow drift. It looks like a snow globe, but the inside swirls with wispy evil instead of fluffy snow. Bizzle picks up unconscious Lars. Tricksy continues tracking the boot prints.

Tricksy leads the party to a bloody trail. Slick gets a sense that something isn’t quite right in the sound of the forest. Beard, still grievously wounded, dashes ahead toward the sound of a clock and enters an illusory field masking a small keep. A phalanx of toy soldiers shoots Beard unconscious with rifles. Tricksy sees none of that and continues tracking the blood trail to dead reindeer.

Slick, curious about the popping noises, follows Beard. The soldiers shoot at Slick when he comes through the field. Bizzle pokes through the field, gets a measure of the situation [SALUTE: five soldiers, shooting Beard dead, next to a keep on the other side of an illusory wall, wearing identical uniforms possibly in service of Kringle, time now, armed with rifles and bayonets] and returns to dump Lars in the snow. Tricksy sends Knit through to recon while Slick receives a follow up attack of bayonets and projectiles.

Bizzle charges in with his scimitars taking out the leftmost soldier. He shifts right giving Slick the sneakiness he needs to take out the next one in line. Tricksy gets the next one with her shortbow while Slick takes a refreshing potion break. Bizzle takes out the next one and Tricksy the next. Slick gets a sneak on the last toy soldier and the first squad is defunct. Bizzle stands on Beard and feeds him a healing potion in time for a second wave of toy soldiers to advance. Beard lights a bonfire under one of them and Tricksy finishes the job with an arrow. She and Slick take out the last toy soldier.

An inky darkness envelops Slick, and he is gored by an unseen assailant’s horns. Slick lashes back blindly with his axe and makes hard contact, breaking his attacker’s concentration. The blackness dissipates revealing an unpleasant demon introducing himself as Krampus. Bizzle charges in with flashing scimitars and boisterous taunting. Beard, from his repose, calls down a moonbeam of radiance on Krampus and then rolls out of the illusory field. Tricksy plugs Krampus with shortbow shots. Krampus breaks a nail clawing Slick into unconsciousness. Krampus is quickly overwhelmed by concentrated revenge attacks and falls dead.

Bizzle checks out a bulky bag Krampus carried; it’s full of dark toys like the dark snowglobe. Beard drags the mischievous bag into a clearing and, with the refreshment of his salvage bar, destroys the evil toys with a lightning storm. Bizzle stands on Slick and feeds him a salvage bar.

The team enters the keep, which is larger on the inside, and finds Kringle chained to his workbench, forced to construct toys for Krampus who then enchants them with evil. Liberated Kringle whistles for his eight reindeer but only five respond. They retrieve the sleigh and help Kringle deliver non-evil toys to the good children of Iceville, merely one day late.

 

Rooster announces that Tricksy, Slick, Bizzle, and brooding svirfneblin rogue loner Dagger are hired as bodyguards for a special envoy with an exclusive invitation to an auction of collectible items, which rumor has were stolen from the lords of waterdeep. Rooster doesn’t want the job traced back to R&S so disguises are mandatory, discretion is emphasized, and greycoats are forbidden. The team presents itself to senior provisioning manager Quint. He collects the greycoats and issues appropriate attire from an impossibly well-stocked wardrobe. Bizzle selects an outdated brown suit over his rumpled stiltskins with an extra charismatic brown bowler. For Tricksy, it’s long pants embroidered with shou brocaid to cover her rumpled stiltskins.

Slick fancies a fancy dress but settles for a dwarven kilt that’s a little on the frock side. Dagger requests a menacing black suit and trench coat which he’d be wearing on his day off anyway.

Rooster introduces client Finde Wervanion. She is an objective beauty made even more charming by an ear-to-throat scar. She wears her abruptly skeptical disposition like she wears her gold dress. She loudly doubts the team’s competence in general and Slick’s dress in particular. Smitten hue-mon Bizzle wins her confidence by introducing himself as Byron The Carpenter and attempting to bisect Rooster’s desk with a quick flourish of concealed scimitars.

Finde hands Bizzle / Byron a paper disclosing their destination, Ye Olde Bakery. Tricksy, connoisseur of scones, knows right where to go. Bizzle hails a carriage with his disproportionately short arms and makes himself a complete nuisance trying to intimidate the cabby for no good purpose, much to the cabby’s 

amusement. Slick reasons that one may simply hire a carriage with coin and demonstrates the effectiveness of said capitalism by paying the cabby 2 gp for a ride to Ye Olde Bakery. Bizzle opens the carriage door for Finde and sees that Dagger is already comfortably seated without anyone noticing. How does he do that?

They arrive without further incident at Ye Olde Bakery. A beggar at the door strongly suggests a contribution of some sort, and he blocks the door when Bizzle reaches to open it. Dagger sizes up the beggar, but instead of discerning hidden weapons he notices the beggar tugging a string that goes through the wall. Finde remarks on the positive attributes of the bakery’s day old bread. The beggar agrees, provided it’s Secondday. Finde drops a coat button in his mug. The beggar knocks on the wall in a pattern, and they are admitted into the bakery.

Four thugs poorly impersonating bakers conceal loaded crossbows behind the counter. Finde leads her bodyguards to a back room containing commercial quantities of bakers’ ingredients. Finde indicates an arbor of dried vines against the wall, and Bizzle enters the portal first. He arrives in a dungeon on the other side. The portal is one way. A natural cavern is to the right, a worked stone passageway is to the left through closed double doors. Fendi follows Bizzle through. Dagger comes through, not that anyone notices, followed by Slick and Tricksy.

Tricksy and Slick open the double doors. A Darkwater Cartage gnoll is guarding the antechamber beyond. Bizzle positions himself face to face with the gnoll while Fendi passes. Fendi directs them down a narrow passage that opens to a great hall. The team fans out around Fendi to guard her from the crowd of powerful Sword Coast shakers and their hired goons. The groups collect around illusory displays to study the offered items.

In a surprise for the Ransom and Salvage regulars, R&S principal Frug Ransom is attending the auction with protector Squat with his war maul. The anonymous mission and officious nature of the auction strictly precludes any mutual acknowledgement. Frug seems interested in a ship’s steering wheel.

A couple of arcane fellows loiter intently around a display of an orange crystal. A spellguardsman loiters intently around the arcane fellows. Quastarte must be collecting orange crystals for some reason.

R&S nemeses Darkwater Cartage aren’t concealing their presence at all. Three gnolls, including Bizzle’s personal archrival and role model, Mutt, mind a mysterious figure, Mr. Gray, covered head to toe in a dark, cloaking garment.

A well-dressed gnome, Quoji Caltix Uricorin Toryn, brought along a half-orc for muscle. Quoji is very chatty, but his attempts to socialize are rebuffed by the other participants guarding their intentions, bidding and otherwise.

Three cackling hags of three ages in three colors brought no muscle at all. Fendi greets them as “mothers”.

A jovial tiefling, Mr. Forgiveness, brought along a couple of golem protectors for power servos.

Fendi checks out the displays, but the object of her interest is not evident.

Mr. Cartwright, half-elf auctioneer, welcomes the bidders from the dais and explains the rules of the silent auction. A unwelcoming fog obscures a moving something behind Mr. Cartwright. Slick notices an exquisite sword with a scaled blue hilt on Mr. Cartwright’s hip. Dagger uses his helm of telepathy to probe the fog for intelligence. Feedback knocks him to the ground creating a scene. Bizzle drags Dagger out of the hall to minimize Fendi’s embarrassment.

Tricksy and Slick continue to study the fog. Dagger focuses his helm on the mysterious Mr. Gray and learns of his keen interest in a bone harp. Bizzle keeps himself between Fendi and any approacher. Cartwright reappears to begin the auction, and bidders are summoned to the bidding brazier.

First item up is a pair of evening gloves to store items like a wine goblet or a dagger. Mr. Forgiveness gets the high bid, beating out the mysterious Mr. Gray.

Next up is the bone harp of enchantment breaking. Unsurprisingly, the mysterious Mr. Gray wins this object of his obvious desire.

Next up is the orange crystal of conspicuous interest to the Quastarte mages. The three hags swoop in to vie for the orange crystal as well. The mysterious Mr. Gray approaches with some interest, but is scorned away by the other glowering bidders. The mages win the auction on a technicality of equivalence when Mr. Cartwright disqualifies the “still beating heart of his chosen enemy” as an acceptable bid from the hags. The hags get extremely tetchy at this rejection and adjourn to the back of the room to start some dubious chanting.

Next up are four horseshoes of zephyring that allow a mount four inches of levitation over normally impassable terrain such as water. Mr. Forgiveness bids so that he can crack a joke about levitating his golems. Garrulous gnome Quoji wins the shoes.

Next up is an unremarkable ship’s steering wheel with a damaged nameplate Quicks– something. It attracts a lot of bidding interest, but Frug Ransom overly outbids the others for a definitive win.

Next up are a matched sword and helm of night. The sword is sharper than any smith could work, capable of cutting cans and then tomatoes and then cans of tomatoes. The helm lets one lurk about in shadow form making it simple to locate and acquire cans of tomatoes. The popular lot is won by Mr. Forgiveness.

Mr. Cartwright presents an unexpected bonus item fetched from the dark fog behind him. Here for their consideration is an old man in chains, but not just any old man in chains. The lords of Waterdeep created a dread disease known as marsember pox. This old man in chains has the only known immunity to marsember pox, and immunity is conveyed through his blood. Mr. Cartwright will even throw in a vial of live marsember pox to the winning bidder. The bidding for the curative old man in chains is fierce, mostly by bidders intent on keeping it away from the other bidders. Only the hags abstain in order to continue chanting up their malfeasance. Mr. Gray casts the winning bid for the curative old man in chains.

Now it’s time to exchange monies for winnings. Mr. Cartwright dispels the backstage fog revealing a dracolich guarding the auctioned items. Mr. Forgiveness and Quoji collect and leave with their items. Mr. Gray approaches to collect his harp and his curative old man in chains at which point Fendi warns Dagger that there’s about to be a kerfuffle. That’s all Dagger ever wanted to hear.

A flash of light marks the completion of hag chanting. A flash of light marks the mages’ counterspell. The spellguardsman clashes in against the hags. Squat’s Old Lady sails in and clocks out one hag. The gnolls surround Mr. Gray protectively.

Tricksy dashes to the ceiling where she can easily watch for threats to Fendi but attracts the mistakenly protective aggro of the dracolich. They exchange mighty attacks, forcing Tricksy to take a potion break.

Dagger notices the dracolich is missing a fang exactly like Mr. Cartwright’s sword. He sprints across the entire hall up to the dais, snatches Mr. Cartwright’s sword right out of his belt, and escapes with it but suffering a dagger wound in his back. On a hunch, Dagger commands the dracolich to heel and to stop attacking. The dracolich obeys a little, but takes a protective bite out of Slick standing too close to Dagger, frightening many on the floor.

Mr. Gray and his gnolls charge the dais. Fendi wants to get to the curative old main in chains before Mr. Gray, but Mr. Cartwright is in the way. Bizzle tries to

shove Mr. Cartwright out of the way but trips on the dais stairs. Dagger and his pet dracolich assault Mr. Gray and his gnolls. Mr. Gray pulls back his hood and gazes into Dagger’s eyes. It isn’t love that medusan Mr. Gray is expressing, it’s petrification.

Dagger’s final act is to douse Mr. Cartwright’s toothsword in basilisk poison, making for an epic statue.

While Mr. Gray’s gnolls are tied up with the dracolich, Fendi and Bizzle slice Mr. Cartwright into a change of heart. Bizzle lets him flee. Fendi protects the curative old man in chains. Slick joins next to her and Tricksy engages Mutt with help from Knit the suturefly. The dracolich takes out one gnoll, but the other two gnolls give Slick the business. Slick sneaks in a finessed axe attack. Mr. Gray gets a little panicked when the dracolich resists his stony gaze and urges the gnomes to meat shield him as he gives up on the harp and the curative old man in chains to retreat. Fendi hugs the curative old man in chains leading Tricksy to conclude that either Fendi has marsember pox or, yes, Fendi’s father is none other than the curative old man in chains. Awwww, kawaii, she mutters in orcish.

Meanwhile, the spellguardsman is surrounded by hags. Swinging Squat charges into the hags, knocking one over. He scoops up the spellguardsman and charges back out. The hags finally have enough and retreat without the orange crystal.

As the gnolls pull back, Bizzle gets the bone harp to play an old human restorative hymn. Dagger oozes back into warm life. The dracolich overrides his helm of telepathy and cordially requests the return of his freedom tooth. Dagger relinquishes the tooth. The dracolich departs heading further into the dungeon, which it turns out is the ancient dwarven mine of Undermountain. Bizzle tosses the bone harp to Mutt, but they’re keeping Fendi’s father. Tricksy, compulsive collector of dangerous knickknacks, collects the vial of marsember pox.

The team gathers around Fendi and her father to escort them out. Squat and his Old Lady guard a portal opened by the Quastarte mages for their egress. Mr. Gray peers at Squat intently. Squat peers back impressively, holding Mr. Gray and gnolls at bay and definitely not petrifying. The team leaves through the portal.