USPS Session 20: Battles before the Bands Battle Report

General Summary

The session picked up right where it last left off, on the evening three days before the Soundwave Showdown was to commence, Party 2 was about to do a whole lot of shopping when Willow noticed that she couldn't find Brynhil anywhere, not even at her house!
Willow began scouring the town for her friend as Diaga bought a whole ton of Keen Candies and learned their recipe.
As Willow reached the end of her search for Brynhil, she heads into the bar, the Drunk'n Droopy to get a drink and get some information.
At the bar, a Dwarf who looks surprsingly like Ed Sheeran is about 5 tankards in when he asks for yet another drink. He immediately notices the bartender topping a quarter of his drink with water, and he immediately calls the man out.
The bartender asks the dwarf to "kindly" stop running his supply dry, to which the man, Rumple Bumpskin, responds with a fist straight into the bar counter.
As Willow sits down at the bar, she chats up the barfolk to hear that Brynhil has a "new friend" whom the barfolk all seemed to have seen holding hands with her since the previous day, and she immediately goes to get a couple of drinks.
After the couple of drinks, Willow heads out one last time to find Brynhil, and as Diaga and Harvoni follow her out, they are stopped by the Dwarf Rumple Bumpskin. He shows interest in their plight and wants to join the crew to help locate this Brynhil lady.
Seeing the handsome redheaded dwarf show genuine concern, they accept his help and go to Tseren's house to seek out Brynhil.
Upon reaching the Tolgrav household, they are greeted by Naut who slowly recognizes Party 2, minus their new friend.
Naut calls Tseren to the door, whom greets the crew. Tseren mentions that Brynhil missed practice the previous day, and that since "her friend" came into town, she's been acting very different and very busy.
Tseren lets the crew set their stuff down for the night as Naut calls the group over and hands them a very handsome reward of 15 Gold to split between the entire party for their efforts in handing out posters for the festival.
Naut says he's "paying (his) genrosity forward for the bountiful harvest this season". With this in-mind, Willow has a new sense of vigor and heads back to find Brynhil heading back into her house holding hands with a large Minotaur woman.
Knocking on the door, Brynhil answers and talks to Willow for a few minutes, basically saying that the two will talk tomorrow during their practice.
Willow, upon hearing this, goes to the bottom of a few bottles until the bar closes.
Roger breaks and enters into a random house and steals some oven-hot bread, scalding himself in the process, but it was worth it to him.
Roger then takes his rest in the woods away from everyone else.  In the middle of the night, Roger has a nightmare recurring from his childhood about an invisible monster of wind chasing him, and upon waking up, he realizes he is in the body of himself as a 5-6 year-old child.
Taking this as a side-effect of the Fountain of Youth-enchanted blood he drank earlier that day, Roger heads back to bed acting like nothing is different.
Waking up the next day, Party 2 head to the town square where they see all the bands meeting with the Jarl once more to divvy out the volunteer work for the day.
As Harvoni goes off and shops for the day, and Willow goes to get herself done up at a salon, Roger, Diaga, and Rumple head along with the Vampire Weekend band to assist in putting together a play for the town denizens and the children.
The three members of Party 2 begin dealing out roles for the play "A Midsummer Night's Flumpf", with Diaga playing Lady Hestia, Roger playing Duke Thesles, and Rumple playing Bottom.  The members of Vampire Weekend argue a bit more about the roles, but eventually Germaine gives in and allows Rosebud to play Queen Hecate, a role he knows she hates.
As they practice the play, Roger struggles to remember his lines as he now has the mind of a child, while Rumple is quite the natural at the play and excels in his role.
During the first rehearsal, the same above trend continues, with Diaga even getting a hang of her role as well, as she even shows some interest in Vampire Weekend's Germaine.
Willow, meanwhile, practices songs for a few hours with Tseren as the both of them wait for Brynhil, who is now over an hour late.
As Brynhil shows up fashionably late, Willow is obviously struggling to learn all the songs they will play in the next two days, with Brynhil showing Willow how to try and read the sheet music.
After a couple of hours of frustrating practice, Willow begins to get a hang of things, leading to her asking Brynhil about her "new friend".
Brynhil apologizes for her spaciness these past couple of days, as she has been struggling to introduce her shy sister Zasha to the town.
Willow breathes a huge sigh of relief, and the two of them begin talking about the festival to happen in two days time, as Brynhil gets excited about all the fun and games the two of them are going to enjoy together.
Willow finally gets a hang of the music right at the end of their practice session, and her and Brynhil head to the performance of "A Midsummer Night's Flumpf" while holding hands.
The play goes off without a hitch, with Rumple and Diaga acting their hearts out and earning a few dozen silver each.
After the play, the party head to the community dinner where the metal band from Heilagur (Spare the Dying) serve some tasty traditional "Swedish Meatballs" (but what the heck does Swedish mean?)
Willow and "her band" get pulled to the side, as apparently the sound equipment for the show has yet to arrive, meaning that those who were supposed to deliver it from the Ezlekhian side of the Feramonto Mountains have encountered some troubles.
Willow agrees to help with getting the equipment after hearing that an "excitable Leonin woman" specifically asked for her group's help.  The crew put together the last-second preparations before they plan to head for the equipment the next morning.
At the dinner, Diaga and Germaine end up bonding quite a bit, with Diaga opening up slightly about the crazy travels she's been on thus far and her lack of direction with them.
Germaine ends up talking about how he never had a father really present in his life.  Apparently he was born in Ezlekh in a supposed "Amidrakh Empire" which ended up falling when he was very young, which immediately rings a bell to Diaga.
Germaine says that his father may still be out there, according to his mother, as the man was an extremely stubborn vampire.
The two bond a bit more over other stories, and agree that they'll be hanging out during the Soundwave Showdown when it goes down in a little over 1 day.  This ends the session report...

Campaign

Lines Drawn in the Sand

Protagonists

Harvoni Bodma

True Neutral* Shifter (Apothecary)
Druid 7

59 / 59 HP

STR
10

DEX
15

CON
17

INT
15

WIS
18

CHA
11

Roger

Neutral Evil Fallen Aasimar (Outlander)
Warlock 7
Fighter 1

59 / 59 HP

STR
13

DEX
12

CON
14

INT
9

WIS
13

CHA
18

Willow Ulgen

LG Satyr (Noble)
Bard 9

72 / 72 HP

STR
10

DEX
16

CON
17

INT
13

WIS
14

CHA
20

Diaga

True Neutral Yuan-Ti (Mystek Punk)
Fighter 10
Wizard 3

132 / 132 HP

STR
16

DEX
10

CON
16

INT
16

WIS
9

CHA
10

Rumple Bumpskin

Forest Gnome (Noble)
Rogue 8

34 / 34 HP

STR
11

DEX
18

CON
10

INT
14

WIS
9

CHA
7

Player Journals

Before the Battle of the Bands P2 - Journal 20 by Harvoni Bodma

Report Date

30 Nov 2024

Primary Location

Tralljór

Related Characters

• Rumple Bumpskin