Session 21: Foxy Lady
General Summary
With all of the guards dead and their horses left behind, we figure it’s a better idea to use them to escape rather than go on foot. While me and Amelia have no trouble getting up on the horses, everybody else struggles to befriend them enough to hitch a ride. TT is immediately bucked off of hers and decides to ride with me instead, Inami laughs her ass off at that before getting kicked away by her horse, and Owk’s refuses to even look at him. There’s not enough time to deal with this, so Amelia uses her magic to suffocate his horse and raise it as a zombie. He’s thoroughly disgusted, but doesn’t have much of a choice but to use it, carrying along her guard zombie too. Off we go with me using my own magic to cover our tracks until the trail of the jewel thieves leads us into a small town.
It’s a quiet town and doesn’t appear to have much going on, so we head over to the inn to question the locals. A little exchange of gold has the innkeeper telling us what we need to know and it appears Thomas and Jim have holed themselves up here for the time being. We get their room key, head upstairs, and as we open the door to send Cayde in to maul them to death in their sleep; there stand the jewel thieves. They were fully expecting a fight already, but calm down when they see me…up until I mention that the guards mistook us for them. They panic now because this means that we know all about their treasure, so Thomas attacks us while Jim dives behind his bed to grab his gear.
It’s a short-lived fight as we knock Thomas unconscious and he ends up falling from the window. Owkbanok grabs Jim before he can do anything, demanding he tell us where the jewels are, and after we get our information; he kills him. Amelia raises them both from the dead, leaving them as a little surprise for the guards when they inevitably catch up. We then leave for the outskirts of town, off to the barn Jim told us of. It’s guarded by two dogs, but with Cayde’s help in distracting them, we slip onto the property easily. We dig up the treasure and immediately leave town, camping away from the main roads to avoid any suspicion. Come morning, we get back on the trail for the big treasure and the map leads us to the heavily guarded city of Merrine.
The map tells us to go around it, but seeing as how we need some supplies, we make the mistake of heading inside. The guards are already suspicious and state that Amelia seems familiar, but they let us pass. It’s then we come across the bounty board…all of our wanted posters plastered to it for the world to see. We make quick work of tearing them down and when an oblivious bounty hunter approaches and asks to team up, Owkbanok secretly threatens him via magic and sends him on his way. We all poke fun at each other’s posters, Owk’s being an incredibly awful caricature of himself, Amelia’s being heavily outdated, and mine being from a time where I actually knew what a shower was. I try to hide it, but Amelia gets a hold of it and the party is left s h o o k at the pretty boy on the paper.
They try and prod me to figure out how I spiraled so far, but I keep my secrets one day longer and they finally give up. We decide strolling about this city might not be a good idea for any of us, so off we go, following the map’s directions and heading around. Eventually the cliffside gives way to a valley decorated with tribal banners. Amelia knows enough to know that they’re probably not friendly to outsiders and warns us that we might get ambushed. Her and TT fall into a heated debate about fantasy racism and as I joke that we should trade them for safe passage, a volley of arrows lands before us. In order to be granted safe passage through their territory, the gnolls want us to hand over our weapons, which they’ll return once we’re through. We’re not fond of that though and out of nowhere, Owkbanok cracks a joke, stating he’s fed up with door to door salesmen.
We’re all confused at first, but once the gnolls laugh, we all jump in on the joke. We paint a picture of Owkbanok being an impulsive spender with a bit of a gambling problem and cue even more laughter. The tribe doesn’t believe any of this bullshit for a second, but it’s hilarious nonetheless. Their leader steps forward, allowing us safe passage so long as Owk hands over a shiny necklace. He does so with much reluctance, so we bid the tribe farewell, trekking up another cliffside before camping out. Inami decides that it’s the perfect night for drugs and drinks, so once the booze is flowing, we swap stories of our pasts. Finally, everyone gets to learn what happened to the pretty boy on my wanted poster, we get to learn that Inami died once due to gang violence, and Owkbanok regales us with the story of how he burned down a village and got a dragon thrown into the mix.
We also tell stories of dear darling Morthos, who was lost too soon. The next day, a halfling trade caravan passes by so we all do a little shopping. We still have at least a week of travel ahead of us, so off we go, encountering enemy territory in the form of a child’s treehouse and spotting a white fox. Doesn’t seem that odd for a fox to be in such a place, but she purposefully boops her snoot into us and runs off, always checking to see if we’re going to follow. Everybody falls in love with her, TT even giving her a name. Elsa, as we call her now; leads us to a magical grove full of goodberries and insists we have some. While everyone was suspicious of her intentions at first, TT eats a berry and it’s then we realize that Elsa isn’t an enemy at all. She’s a simple guardian wandering about and taking care of travelers.
I’m sure you’re expecting us to do something evil upon learning that, but we don’t. We leave Elsa to her duties and carry on. The next road we encounter looks plowed through several different ways, but it clearly isn’t man-made. I explain to everyone what it could be and we send our zombie horse ahead in case of sinkholes. It isn’t long before the ground gives way beneath it and we watch in horror as the thing drops and out crawls a giant, disgusting bug-like creature. A few more crawl out as we fight, but we manage to kill them all. We carefully step around the newly formed sinkholes, all of us on edge and expecting even more of a fight.
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