Chimneyhaus Session 2 - The Stinky Mouse Club Both Arrives and Returns
General Summary
Update from last session: each character was awarded 283 XP for the pips-worth of goods they brought home with them.
Upon returning to their home at Chimneyhaus the group needed to continue Session 0 a bit because we needed to understand their place in the community, not to mention where each lived. Thistle was easy. Due to her hormonal imbalance, she's quite odiferous, and lives in the cheese caves beneath the chimney. Mace, the alchemist, we decided probably has a green cloud of funk around him at all times. It also makes sense for him to be apprenticed to Burdock Summerholme , which explains why Burdock requested their assistance. Daisy is a tanner/leatherworker, which can be stinky work as well, so we decided she lived close to the top near the cheese smoker to minimize the smells the community has to deal with. Thatch is an artificer, so probably regularly smells of grease and sweat himself, and so The Stinky Mouse Club was born!
At the gates to Chimneyhaus, the guards, Aloysius and Agnes, found their extra companions (Piggie and Joseph ) suspicious. After a few minutes talking, they agreed to have Agnes escort Thistle and Joseph up to Daisy's loft since she often had various sorts of restraints lying around...for...reasons. In the meantime Aloysius went to alert the town elder, May Windhome . Mace returned to the alchemist shop to report back to Burdock everything that had transpired. Thatch was late for a shift as engineer and so had to sit this one out. Piggie was granted temporary refuge in Sweetwing's (May's sparrow) roost area.
The next morning, May and Aloysius gathered up Mace and they arrived at Daisy's loft for a debrief. May and Daisy listened in concern and eventually horror once the group got to the part about the candy-coated zombies. She ungagged Joseph to get his side of the story, but all that emerged was the constant stream of nonsense that he always produced, so she gagged him back up. Arrangements were made to have Joseph be moved into an unused guest shack in town. In the interim, everymouse went back to visit Burdock as he'd been perusing Joseph's journal.
It seems the change Joseph recorded noticing was actually a few days after Newton's death, which was an interesting coincidence. He says he did skim through some of the journal, and thought the candy "recipes" were especially interesting. While they showed a complete lack of taught skill, it did look like Joseph had some innate talent with alchemy and the creation of his formulas was well-documented and rigorous.
He then pulled out a piece of parchment he'd found folded between two pages. It was covered with strange, indecipherable symbols and diagrams. Burdock said he'd never seen anything like this, but said it might be related to the various passages within the journal in which Joseph says something along the lines of "he came again to bring me new forbidden knowledge". It does not appear Joseph recorded who "he" actually was.
The party then regrouped the next day at the shack where Joseph was being held. Thistle decided it might make Joseph a bit more responsive if she threatened to break The Sweet Tooth idol. This sent Joseph into a rage, so the team attempted a good cop mouse/bad cop mouse routine which helped a little. Joseph stopped trying to convince everymouse that there was no "he".
Noticing the unexpected heft of the idol, Mace began examining a lot closer, and discovered he could hear a very faint pulsating sound coming from within. At that point, the party talked themselves into finally cracking the tooth open to see what was inside. Drilling a small hole into it (in front of Joseph) caused a black, viscous goo to leak from the Tooth. Joseph then ceased being "crazy" and with deadly seriousness warned them that Orpheus would not take kindly to their defilement of the idol.
In for a penny, Mace cut off the top of the tooth, thrust his (gloved) hand into the goo, and pulled out a large, black, pulsating sunflower seed that fairly quickly slowed and stopped beating moments later. Not sure why it would help, Mace thrust the seed back into the Tooth, but nothing changed. Joseph screamed and passed out.
After getting Joseph into bed to rest, they told May about what Joseph had said about Orpheus, but she dismissed the report of a legend being behind the whole fiasco. A few days later, Joseph awoke completely ignorant of the previous year. He remembered only being in his shack, and noting a change in the air. He asked about going home, and Thistle told him they were going to turn him over to the Order of the Green Mice to be held accountable for his crimes against their members. Pleading innocence, Joseph eventually resigned himself to his fate.
Published Resources Used In This Adventure
Rewards Granted
Because they destroyed the Sweet Tooth idol, they're able to extract the silver accents within (600p)
200XP/mouse
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