Game log 23 and 30 June 2024: He-Who-Cures-the-Whores

Personae dramatis

Tonfa Guy, doesn't speak or have a name but has a tonfa
Grignok, handsome orc druid
Augustus, human cleric

Quid occurrit

Once back in town, Tonfa Guy trains for five days. He takes a moment to just hang out in the Scarlet Harlot. After signaling for an ale he finds a seat and listens for jobs. 

Augustus starts looking for a town elder, listening around to hear if anyone important needs Cure Disease. He mostly hears about commoners with either influenza of the clap. Yengrátōr, the barkeep at the Scarlet Harlot, says that Rêkoros, the leader of the Reapers mercenary company, is usually around in the evening. Augustus asks Yengrátōr to point out Rêkoros, and Yengrátōr agrees.

Then, Augustus asks around the Scarlet Harlot to see if any of the working girls need, uh, help. Somehow, he doesn't piss them off. A young woman with bulging eyes sidles up to Augustus. "Hey, hun, I've had a run o' pain down there, and not just my Aunt Flo, either." He checks her out, and her ailments puzzle him. "It hurts when I whiz, Pastor."

Augustus casts Cure Disease on the hooker. She is cured! She even runs outside and whizzes on the side of the tavern to test it, and she's good! She gives him a smooch on the cheek. "Name is Atilíā, Pastor. I'll have to do you a favor some time." She winks at Augustus. "Hey, everyone! Reverend Moonbeam is the best!" Atilíā runs off, saying, "'Scuze me, but I gotta make my room for tonight."

Traffic is normal around town. That evening, the crowd thins out. The Scarlet Harlot has a light crowd, mostly drinkers. A woman wayfarer is babbles loudly about some flaming sword of legend. Augustus asks her about it. "Aw, you don't know the tale of Ženêtiš? He cut off a necromancer's finger and took his ring!" Augustus says he has no idea who Ženêtiš was. "He was amazing! He paid for the burial of some old woman he didn't know by selling off a gold necklace that he also took from the necromancer! I wonder what happened to his sword. That must have been a great sword. My husband could swing it, I bet." Augustus asks when this happened. "I don't know when it happened, Reverend. Not like I saw it. But I heard it from my dad when I was a little girl."

The barkeep Yengrátor tugs on Augustus's sleeve. "Hey, He-Who-Cures-the-Whores, you see the guy with the big tattoos on his forearms? Well, you were asking about him earlier."

A big man in his thirties with lots of tattoos on his forearms and a bushy black beard waves to Augustus, then clasps Augustus's hand. "How good it is to see you! I'm Rêkoros, leader of the Reapers. I hear you have been asking about me, friend?" Augustus says he is looking to cure the sick. Rêkoros pokes Augustus's belly and laughs. "So you're sucking up, Reverend? Well, don't worry, as it happens, I got a lieutenant with the illness. No, not from your girlfriend. The one that's been going around. We got him quarantined since we can't have him spreadin' it to everyone."

He leads Augustus outside of town, and outside the north gate. "Reverend, we normally don't see your goddess with us. Maybe we could use you to keep watch over camps." He shrugs. He leads Augustus to a tent, in which is a dwarf with a lot of snot on his beard, and Augustus thinks that it's the flu. He casts Cure Disease on the dwarf. He lifts his head, and smiles, then takes in a deep breath. "Now I can breathe easy, son."

Rêkoros nods and puts his hand on Augustus's shoulder. "What do you drink, Padre?" Augustus says he drinks dark ale. "A dark ale, eh? I'll take you back to the Scarlet Harlot before the gates shut and give you a big ol' mug. It'll put hair on your chest!" And with that he takes Augustus back to the Scarlet Harlot and buys him some of the actual good ale. It does not taste like cat piss, unlike most of the ale folks drink around here.

Rêkoros and Augustus chat about business. "Ah, you gotta pray to the dark lady for guidance, eh? Watching the stars? Well, we ain't got no wars a-brewin' with all the snifflin' and pukin'."

Augustus asks, "What better time to attack an opponent or sow discord than this time?"

Rêkoros shrugs. "Well, then we'll be at war for thirty years, and ravage the whole kingdom!"

Tonfa Guy hears from a patron about Batrežíā, a noblewoman of Mīštássun, who went north to Rēláištiš for a trip. She never came back. She left wearing three platinum buttons on her collar. Tonfa Guy tries to get when this happened from the drunken patron. "Couple o' years ago. Dems buttons, though, worth a lot."

Tonfa Guy goes looking for scum. Skeevy folks chuckle as Tonfa Guy tugs on their clothes, then point him to a bar on the other side of town from the Scarlet Harlot. It's a two-story wattle-and-daub building that looks pretty run down. This is the Vulgar Lizard.

The activity is moderate, with plenty of drinking and chatter in darkened alcoves. Tonfa Guy looks skeevy enough for this crowd to feel at-ease with. In one corner there's some gambling, with a really tall gnome woman winning. The gnome woman's voice cracks a lot and she has long, curly dark hair, going to her waist. A lot of folks shrug and ignore the game. She may or not be winning, but she's the key player.

The folks ignoring her know her. An elf woman looks at Tonfa Guy. "B-B-Bustoríā is winning again." She snorts and takes a sip. "Butchu aren't playing. Good move."

The Tonfa Guy gives a sign of acknowledgement. The short elf woman smiles and nods, and twiddles with her earrings. "Looking for a score?" Tonfa Guy signals that he is.

The elf woman laughs. "Not a, ah, um, a, you know, a talker." She smiles. "Not my strong suit either."

She leans down and looks from side to side. "Listen, hun, you sure aren't going to find a big score around here. Maybe in the spots where the Town Watch truly goes. They just come here when one of those homes gets robbed."

The Tonfa Guy smiles and gives a sign for acknowledgement. The signals for an ale for the lady before getting up to leave. The woman pulls out a scroll from under her cloak. The Tonfa Guy sits back down, suddenly interested.

Short elf woman goes on, "This map leads to a mine. It's my map and I'm not sharing this, but I need help if I'm gonna loot this mine. It's to the east of Rēláištiš a bit. You don't go into those kinds of places alone."

Tonfa Guy signals he has someone he'd like to bring along. The elf woman nods. "Oh, you wanna bring your buddy? Sure, the more the merrier. Equal shares, of course." The Tonfa Guy gives a sign for acknowledgement. "But none of this gets out, got it?" The Tonfa Guy acknowledges.

The big gnome woman and some guy are arguing about whether or not she cheated. He scowls and spits and throws down his coins and walks off. Game over.

"We can ah, um—aw, you know, take off tomorrow. I'm Nílde. But you don't know me." The Tonfa Guy acknowledges, then promptly and discreetly leaves.

The next morning, Tonfa Guy pushes Augustus awake. Once the two are awake, they get Felcanis to let them use bill, then head for the North Gate of town. There they make a fuss so Grignok will see and stop picking herbs. The three of them meet Nílde there. After getting her to agree to go north with Grignok, they set forth, storm clouds looming ahead.

Game log 6 November 2016: Time to level up and get dirty again

Dramatis personae

Caleb, wizard
Mayhem, barbarian
Ash, squire
Kim, thief
Kôštē, cleric (NPC)
Villûdē, guide (NPC)

Quid occurrit

They went back to Mīstássun. On the way, they ran into three men with spears. One of them, who wore stud piercings in his ears, yelled at them to stop. “Doncha know about the toll?"

Caleb said, “There never has been a toll before."

The man with the stud earrings said, “We are collecting tolls in the name of the Queen!"

Caleb asked, “Where are your papers of commission?"

“Papers? We don’t need no steenkin’ papers!"

And then the fight started. The goons yelled, “Make it easy on yourselves!” as they came near.

Caleb said, “We are … on our pockets!"

Kim said, “In your wet dreams!"

The heroic murderhoboes had a field day on the not-so-heroic murderhoboes. Mayhem took out two, and Ash took out one. Kim broke her sword trying to stop one from hitting Caleb. They looted the bodies, and Kôštē bound their wounds.

On the bodies, they found 3 gold pieces, 140 silver pennies, and 147 copper farthings, as well as a bit of amber. More interesting though less lucrative were papers saying that the three men were members of the Reapers mercenary outfit: Permónos, who wore the stud earrings, Prēssīvós, a buck-toothed man, and Dībrátor, who had a hook for a hand. Kim knew the Reapers were mercenary band that camped outside of town and whose leader hung out at the Scarlet Harlot tavern.

Once in town, they sold the bit of amber, and Kim bought a new sword. They spent the next week training and hanging around the bars, keeping their ears open. They heard tales of a dragon living in an odd church in the Eldalîvā Woods in the west, and about the Armor of the Ape in an old tower in the Dumenrôn Swamp to the south. Caleb pored over old books, and found that the dragon Hiszgorr the Poisonous lived in the north of the woods, and tales an odd beast with a flailed tail roamed near a tower in the swamp. Not wanting to fight a dragon, they chose the swamp, though this time wanting to keep away from the ibathene.

Caleb found that no one knew anything about his doppelgänger. Not only that, nobody remembered anything about his doppelgänger, or that he had ever been there.

They made sure to tell the powers that be about the Reapers’ strike. Nabbrášus the mine owner shrugged her shoulders. The Town Watchman at the courthouse said that since the strike happened outside the town walls, there was nothing he could do. The man at the castle with the County took the papers, and thanked them for letting the County know.

Before leaving, they went to see Villûdē at the Wild Cats tavern. She wasn’t having a good night, trying to have the crowd give her money for her tales of the swamp, but they wouldn’t hear of it. “If you saw the ibathene, why are you still alive!” Dodging rotten tomatoes, they went up to Villûdē, and asked her if she wanted to guide them again. Wiping a tomato from her arm, she agreed.

Villûdē had not only heard of the beast with the flail tail, but had seen it, and said it was the santer. She didn’t know about the tower, but said the santer was in the eastern swamp, north of the ibathene and south of the nagas’ island. Caleb, however, thought it best to go at the swamp from the east, taking the road most of the way. Also, he thought it wise to meet the lord of Vēristés Castle, on the eastern road. Friends couldn’t hurt.

Because everybody needs a little ELP.

Thus, they set out on 31 Smôs, two days before the full moon. They took three days to reach the village of Agêdūnon, the last settlement before Vēristés Castle. From Agêdūnon, they set forth, but at midday, saw a tawny blur in the sky coming towards them. As it came nearer, they saw it had leathery bat-wings, the mug of a man, the body of a lion, and the tail of a scorpion.

A manticore. They weren’t too far from the spot in the woods where they fought another manticore a few months ago. It sprayed its tail spikes from afar but missed, while the heroes lobbed their volley. Caleb hit it hard with Stroke of Lightning, and it thought better of the strike and flew away.

As the night fell, they made it to Vēristés Castle. There, nine guards told the
m to hand over their weapons and come inside. After some dithering, they handed over their weapons. “Down with the Queen! Down with Ažbrátōr! Down with Nemmagós!” they shouted to the puzzled gang, and led it inside.

Inside, Lord Kaggrétōr, a man with sharp looks and light brown hair, made them all shout “Down with Ažbrátōr! Down with Nemmagós!” before signing a badly-written screed against the Queen. Most signed with an X, Kim with a squiggle, and Caleb signed, “Praidīvós of Mīstássun.” Kaggrétōr then asked them why the Queen hated him, why she tried to take away his castle, and, if they ever saw Count Gostálios, if they could put in a good word for him so the two could meet to talk.

With that, he threw them out, and tossed their weapons at them. They made camp, not having bought the parts for a raft from the castle.

Res aliae

As the manticore came in, with Chris's head in the way.

We spent a lot of time leveling up. At my behest, the players spent points and money into Carousing, and got two good rumors out of the deal. Being such a shifty crew, having skills in drinking at taverns seemed to fit.

After asking for world details, which brought out the note I had with my original rolls for the world four years ago with the idea that the local tree was a “palm” and the local game was a “reindeer,” Chris (Caleb/Mayhem) thought it a good idea to meet with the nobility, and saw Vēristés Castle near the swamp. Hey, it seemed like a good idea at the time, and I’m always happy to play a loopy NPC.

We somewhat formalized the idea that there were main characters—Caleb and Kim—and more muscle ones—Mayhem and Ash. Mostly, that’s how things have been playing, as when they parley, they use the smarter characters for obvious reasons.