Hey, ho, awoo!
Here's last time.
Our heroes awaken - well, "come to" might be closer to the truth, as they're asleep - in a dungeon. They are all manacled to the wall, along with Princess Yosha Pug and her father, King Puckington Pug! Gelert Sausagedog immediately gets to work picking the lock on his manacle, but then four guards rush in, unshackle Puckington, and drag him out! The dogs notice that all of the guards wear the livery of the Doberman family.
Petunia Pibble casts beast mode and turns into a mouse, and then scampers toward the guards outside their cell door. Dire Newfoundland summons up his might and pulls the loop holding his manacle chain out of the wall, though his paws are still chained together. Peppa Papillon tries to wriggle free, but can't, so she just casts spiritual weapon and blesses a few of the others until someone gets around to freeing her. Hobbes von Shadow uses his slidey, liquidy cat-bones to slip out of his bonds. In the midst of all this, both Peppa and Petunia notice that their magic is much harder to cast, like its draining their power much faster than usual.
Petunia uses magic paw to swipe the keys, but the guards notice, of course. Hobbes slips through the bars on the cell door, grabs the keys, and unlocks it, and then frees Dire. Dire, in turn, grabs the keys and lets Yosha and Peppa down (Sausagedog has, by now, freed himself), and then rushes to battle!
Petunia casts a slick under both guards and they collapse, and the battle is joined - they manage to stand and then swipe with cudgels. Hobbes pummels a guard and Dire rushes in to swing his hammer (why do the dogs have their weapons? Dream logic). The other dogs leave the cell, and they notice Yosha trying to cast magic but the power fizzling at her paws. And then more guards rush in from another hallway, grab the princess, and take her away!
Peppa yells "The princess!" and follows, and Sausagedog joins. Hobbes continues laying a cat-style martial arts smackdown on the guards, and Dire swings his hammer about, occasionally tanking a blow. The guards, for their part, always manage to slip and fall in the oil, and at one point Petunia tries to strike a prone guard with her staff. She tries, but is too tentative (hitting a helpless opponent isn't really what she's good at; meanwhile Hobbes cheerfully kicks a guard in the ribs until he dies). The guard grabs her staff and takes it away!
Petunia looks around for a rock to throw at him and suddenly, she has one in her hand! Realizing she can influence the dream by thinking about it, she tries to get her staff back, but that backfires. The guard stands, eyes glowing, and bellows "THE POWER!" and unleashes a cloud of seeking stingers at the characters.
Petunia tries to tackle him, but he sidesteps her. That doesn't help him when Hobbes kicks him in the back of the head, and the dogs win the fight and rush off after their friends!
Meanwhile, Peppa and Sausagedog arrive in a crowded castle foyer. They see a second floor, but they're more interested in the stage in front of them. Heinrich Doberman marches up and down, dressed in robes and wearing the Crown of Pugmire! Yosha is in stocks on the stage, her little head thrust forward, and Heinrich raises his sword to behead her!
Peppa sends her conjured weapon across the room and smacks Heinrich, distracted him, while Sausagedog looks up hoping for a chandelier - and finds one! He swings across the room and lands in front of Heinrich, knocking the crown off his head, and the two engage in a swordfight.
Peppa calls up the strike of Man, one of her most powerful spells, and sends fire and holy light down on Heinrich. And then Peppa explodes.
The other three dogs arrive about now, just as the crowd is starting to get really ugly. "Kill the Pug!" they scream. Sausagedog tosses the crown into the crowd ("First one who gets it is the new king!") but that tactic doesn't take; these dogs are apparently loyal to Heinrich. He does manage to free Yosha, and Petunia casts arcane lasso and hurls Dire over the crowed into the upstairs...and then explodes!
Hobbes and Sausagedog make their way up as well, with Heinrich and the rest of his loyalists in hot pursuit. They check the doors - one's a broom closet, one's a silver closet, one seems to be Heinrich's room - but the last one they check shows them their goal! A huge egg is tucked into a small bed at the far end of the room, but standing in the way is a nightmare version of Viveka Doberman!
Her eyes drip purple, crackling magic, and her claws are long and blackened. The characters charge into the room, and she points a hand at Dire. Black magic flows out and strikes him, and he vanishes, leaving only his floofs behind. Hobbes dodges past Viveka - Sausagedog tries, but falls to her magic as well - and Hobbes leaps and lands on the egg, smashing it!
Back in the waking world, Hobbes wakes ("ugh, my fur!") to find everyone else already awake and staring at him and Yosha. Yosha raises a paw and calls up light ("oh, thank Man for that!") and then runs out to help Ruby and Boomer and all fight the demons outside.
"Hmm," says Not Even. "Guess if you die in the dream you don't die in real life. Good to know." He looks at Bivi and Marshmallow. "Who next?"
The characters choose Bivi, assume their positions on the cushions, and Not Even sends them under again....
The come to in a warehouse, stacked floor to ceiling with crates and boxes, stretching on for what seems like miles. But they realize they're all old. Petunia leans heavily on her staff, Sausagedog's back is crooked, Hobbes' tuxedo coloring has gone almost all white, Peppa is grey around the snoot and milky-eyed, and Dire's floof has lost some of its luster. Bivi, for his part, is even older, and stares at the markings on a box. "We found this," he says, "in the Fearful Forest. It was many years ago, and there was...oh...I used to know."
The dogs listen carefully and realize that something - or a lot of somethings - is pounding on the walls to this place. They might be on a clock, here.
They think about the organization of this place. The artifacts don't seem to be categorized, but newer stuff is added later, so older stuff would be in the middle. But where would the egg be? They found out about those recently, so that would seem to indicate the edges, but then Dire points out that they're all old now, so maybe in the logic of the dream that happened a long time ago?
They ask Bivi, but he's no help, he can't stay focused. They talk to him a bit and he mentions something about a safe - that's where the really dangerous stuff would be. Sausagedog realizes that a safe would have been built first - the middle, then.
They head off down a hallway (and Bivi tries to wander away, but they steer him back). They find the center of the warehouse, and lo, a floor safe with a combination lock. Sausagedog patiently talks to Bivi about what the combination might be, and he remembers - the date that Pioneer Storehouse in Riverwall was complete! Sausagedog, a very well-read dog, knows this date. They open the safe, expecting an egg...but a serpent slithers out!
It tries to get away, but Dire is too fast and casts a sacred flame on it. It bursts into fire and sizzles, turning over and dying, and all of the dogs wake up.
"That was easy," says Dire. "Ugh, being old sucks," mutters Hobbes. Bivi gives him a look.
"Right, one more," says Not Even, looking at Marshmallow von Mau.
This time, they wake up in Riverwall - but they are all cats! Marshmallow and Hobbes look about the same. Sausagedogcat is a slim little tabby, while Peppa is a pure white kittenish sort of moggie. Dire is a huge ragdoll, and Petunia has become a calico. They look at each other in surprise a bit, and then realize that the world seems...off. The sky is crooked. The buildings are at weird angles. Is this what being a cat is like?
They also notice that the city is full of dogs, but the dogs are all...similar. Not identical, but just brown, generic dogs, nearly faceless. But they stare at the cats, and mothers clutch their pups closer. "Don't like that," growls Dire. "Yeah," says Marshmallow. "Gets old."
They ask Marshmallow where the snake is, and he concentrates and then says "Dog Castle!" It's in the Palace District. They realize that breaking in isn't going to work, so they'll need some distraction. Petunia goes into a butcher shop and a big, beefy pit bull stares her down. "Yeah?"
"I would like some bones!" she says cheerfully. "All you can sell me."
The dog grunts. "Let's see your plastic."
Petunia cocks her head. "You know, you look like my mother's cousin's sister's-"
The dog scoffs. "Bet I don't."
Petunia remembers that she's a cat. Cowed, she hands over her plastic and buys the bones he'll give her. She is overcharged and underserved, but that's life for a cat in Pugmire.
Meanwhile, Sausagedog thinks about where one might find a tunnel into the castle, and comes up with an idea. They find an entrance from the War that leads into a storeroom - a dog is rustling around in there. They toss a bone and lure him over, and Dire casts command on him: "Play dead!" They tie him up and sneak up to the kitchen.
The cats pad quietly through the kitchen, use magic and bones to make dogs look the other way, and manage to sneak upstairs into the castle. As they're looking about and trying to sniff out the evil, Sausagedog, unused to this tiny cat-snoot, sneezes, and the conversation in other rooms halts. He tries to sound dog-like ("boy, it's dusty in here!") but the guards recognize his cat accent (cat-cent? Also Sausagedog's player could not make a roll for love nor money). The guards come pouring out of rooms, and the cats run towards where they smelt the evil!
They wind up in a trophy room, full of treasures stolen from the Monarchies. The guards hot on their heels, Dire calls for Hobbes to help him brace the door. At the other end of the room, they see a brass statue of a huge serpent - that's it!
Petunia fires an elemental beam at it, hoping it'll just melt, but it bursts and a kind of not-quite-Nagayaga stands there! It's still got legs, but its torso is too long for its body and its arms are big and noodly. It charges at them, and Peppa calls down a strike of man. The monster howls in pain and tries to bite at Sausagedog (who runs out to meet it), but Peppa grits her teeth, casts the spell again, and the monster vanishes in holy fire.
The cats awaken - dogs again! (Mostly, not Hobbes or Marshmallow, obviously.) Ruby Labrador enters, wiping off her mace. "You OK in here?"
They groggily nod. "Need help?"
"Nah," she says. "Really Boomer did a lot of the work. Just ripped through them like a murder tornado."
"Yeah, he does that."
The characters have one final dream to invade, though: Viveka Doberman. Not Even lays out the problems for them. "She's not going to cooperate, meaning we need a way to keep her asleep."
"So we'll need to drug her."
"Yes. Also I need to be able to see all of you, so you'll need to be in close proximity." He pauses. "There's something else, too. You didn't die in these dreams when you 'died', but the people having the dreams were friends and allies. Viveka is neither, plus she's a powerful artisan. She might be able to hold your souls there when if you 'die' in her dream, and I don't know what she could do with them."
The dogs nod. This is going to be a difficult fight, and before they even get to that point, they need to figure out how to get near her.
"Do the Dobermans have parties?" wonders Sausagedog. "Like, big fancy ones?"
Yosha shrugs. "They do, but I'm never invited. And I wouldn't go anyway. They only invite friends and political allies."
"Amazed they still have any," growls Dire.
"They've lost much of their overt support," says Yosha, "but there are still families that wouldn't mind seeing them take the throne, or want their support for their own bids."
"Anyway," says Sausagedog, "they'd probably need caterers. Servants, that kind of thing."
"No way would they let cats in," says Marshmallow.
"No," says Sausagedog, warming up, "but we can use disguises!"
"Good," says Not Even. "You've got a long trip home, figure it out, I'll see you there."
Next time: Into the Dreams of Doberman! or, The Dream-Snake Job, or, The Grand Finale!
