(That's very funny if you know anything about this game. You can learn more here. It's pretty cool.)
We open at the Halfway Inn, a cozy little teahouse kind of thing. Five folks are around the table for some patisserie:
- Opal is a duskywhim (moth-like person) songheart, and a member of the Storycloak Guild. Of course, like all duskywhims, they don't really talk, but can play music on a lute-like stringed instrument. They also have a habit of staring at...everything. If they blink they might not see something!
- Torneko is a tatterling (mysterious hooded figure with button eyes; might be a walking teddy bear, we don't know) rookwright and one of the Cloud Coven. She has a small, mechanical creature with her called Bobbin. She also has a habit of falling asleep at inopportune times, meaning Bobbin acts as an alarm clock as much as anything.
- Timbertrod is a woadling (a plant-person) honeywarden of the Verdengarde. Timbertrod has a colony of bees living in their body (basically a walking tree, it's cool, there's room), and extracts honey to trade and give out. Their bees buzz in warning when something bad is about to happen, which is handy.
- Cinderspark Sooter is a patchfolk (basically a big, bipedal raccoon-person) wanderlustian of the Meadowlarch, and as such is an expert negotiator and trader. She also has a habit of compulsively apologizing for everything. She wears a smart coat and a hat with a nifty little tassel.
- Trill is a murmuren (weird furry-frog creature) wildergarde and member of The Fieldhouse. Trill (not his real name; his real name is unpronounceable to most other folk) is most at home among animals, and takes care of the shop night cat and the brindlehowls and mossbacks and so on that live in the area. He has no qualms whatever about stealing from people, since people take from the world all the time.
The Master Pâtissier Beulah Crumb emerges and gives these folks an assortment of pastries and scones to try out (they're delicious), but is clearly fretting. It seems that the noted food critic Nibella McQuaff is going to be here soon, but the shipment of ingredients that the Meadowlarch was meant to deliver hasn't come! Beulah needs at least a few days to refine the ingredients and make the pastries, and is just beside herself that she might not be able to. If McQuaff gives them a bad review, it could spell the end of the Inn!
Cinderspark, a Meadowlarch herself, knows the fellow who was meant to be bringing these things, a nimmian (one of the two types of humans here) named Boss Mortimer. Mortimer isn't the sort to be late or to abscond with goods, so something is clearly wrong. There are six crates of ingredients that should have been delivered. Trill asks for a list, which Beulah readily provides, and Cinderspark looks them over.
(A side note: magic in this setting is centered around jam, and you can make jam out of these ingredients, or mix ingredients to create jam that has an entirely new power! So these ingredients can be pretty valuable.)
The five of them agree to go out and try to go along the route Mortimer was taking and figure out what happened. Beulah says she needs to have everything in no less than seven days, or else she won't have enough time to make what she needs to make. That seems plenty of time! Beulah sets up a huge hourglass on the mantle and flips it, and sand begins slowly falling...
The group gets their adventuring gear together. Opal goes outside and rings their mossback bell, and their mossback, Kudzu (because she gets into everything) comes trudging up. Trill chips at her a bit (and Kudzu is happy to chat a moment), and then everyone heads out along the Twilight Road!
After a bit of travel, the road just...stops. And there's a mountain in the way. There shouldn't be a mountain here. It's just a huge, sheer cliff, stretching up into the night. Trill climbs a tree to look at the stars and orient himself, but yeah, they're in the right place, there's just a mountain here where there wasn't before. It goes for miles in either direction, so their only way forward is up.
Fortunately, Opal has some Nimbrussle Jam. They spread a bit on a bit of scone and feed it to Kudzu, and Kudzu is weightless! Everyone gets on as she begins to float...but then she begins to freak out and tries to run through the air!
Trill grabs her harness and swings down in front of her (murmurens are small creatures, so this doesn't harm Kudzu), and uses his Balancekeeper's Touch ability, correcting Kudzu's imbalance and mitigating her fear. Problem is, of course, that the imbalance has to go somewhere, and Trill feels muddled. He climbs back on Kudzu's back, lays down and looks up at the stars, peeping to himself.
The others continue to help Kudzu up. Timbertrod loops a bit of rope around a tree and pulls Kudzu up, while Torneko finds handholds that she might use. Cinderspark finally appeals to Kudzu's better instincts, ties a bit of scone on a line, and uses it to lure her to float upwards to the top (whereupon she munches the scone and starts snuffling around Cinderspark's pack for more).
And now that we're at the top, what? The Twilight Road appears fragmented, with parts of it looking normal and beaten down, and parts obscured by old growth forest. And there's a weird, glowing cloud, inside of which the characters can see...events? It seems to be night, though, so Trill starts setting up camp. The others look at the cloud, though.
They see the butt of a naked nimmian disappearing into the woods. They see crates getting pulled away, they see chaos and movement...and then one of them touches the cloud, and everything gets very swimmy for a moment...
...and they're back at the Halfway Inn, sitting down for breakfast, and then Beulah rushes in to tell them about her missing ingredients.
"I think we dreamed this," says Trill, still somewhat muddled. "And now we're doing it for real." The others are just as perplexed, but Torneko consults her watch and the hourglass and realizes that while her watch is keeping "accurate" time (that is, time has passed), as far as when they are now, it's earlier that day. They realize that they'll need to scale the cliff again, but this time at least they know they need to scale the cliff.
Trill has an idea - there are some marsos in a nearby stable. A marso is a kind of possum/horse creature, good as riding animals, capable of climbing extremely well.
 |
| WHO'S A GOOD MARSO |
He slips into the table and chitters at the marsos a bit, explaining that they need to get up a sheer cliff wall and maybe they can climb it? The marsos are thrilled at the idea (they love climbing), and Trill unhitches their stalls and leads them all out silently, making use of his Shadowfawn jam to move silently. Opal, meanwhile, flutters around and plays their instrument, distracting anyone who might be nearby to see the marso heist.
Timbertrod, before they head out, reaches into the roots and draws out the confusion that's getting in Trill's way, clearing up his mind ("where's my camping gear?").
Thus newly equipped, the party heads back out, two of them each on a marso (they leave Kudzu behind, which doesn't thrill Opal, but they have to admit that Kudzu isn't going to want to float back up a cliff). They get to the cliff and the marsos easily make the climb, and now they're back at the weird jumble of road and the glowing time-cloud. Trill tells the marfos to head back to the stable, you know, whenever they feel like it.
They try and track what happened (avoiding the cloud), and Cinderspark realizes she's standing in a giant footprint. The foot was wearing a shoe (and a darned nice one), and it looks like whatever made these prints chased someone down a path. Another path looks like it was made by a cart; that was probably the Meadowlarch troop coming in, so no point following that. The last one has crates being dragged away.
The characters follow the first trail, and the woods quickly grow thick and oppressive. And then they notice a long tendril-like thing snaking around the handle of Torneko's weaver blade. Opal notices it first and gets excited, thinking it's a thread they can eat, but no, it's a vine.
The creeper vines - for that's what they are, semi-sentient plants that steal whatever they wrap up - try to yank the blade away. Opal tries to free it, Trill tries to point out where to cut it, and Torneko tries to pull it free, but it's Cinderspark whacking it with her quill and repeating "LET GO LET GO LET GO" that does it. They continue walking and, looking up, see clothes, boots, and trinkets hanging from vines. (Trill's eyes get big, everyone else reminds him that they have other things to focus on.)
And then they hear yelling, and find Mortimer strung up in vines, naked as a jaybird, calling for help. As they approach, they are confronted by a small creature with wings, riding a glasshare - a pixie! The pixie grandstands a bit, talking about having rightfully stolen Boss Mortimer.
Trill, however, while he's very much OK with stealing things, is not OK with stealing people. He sneaks behind Mortimer (who is hung up on multiple creeper vines), making use of his Shadowfawn jam, and starts cutting the vines with his cutpurse knife. Meanwhile the others keep the pixie, Gilderboots, talking, until finally there's a crash and Mortimer tumbles to the ground.
Gilderboots makes some grumbly noises, but Trill says that he's rightfully stolen Mortimer, and the pixie sods off on his glasshare. Mortimer gets dressed (and Trill steals everything else that was hanging from the vines) and everyone heads back to the wagon, which Mortimer starts to turn rightways up. He also says that his partner, Rance, is still missing, as are the mossbacks that were pulling the wagon.
The characters follow another path and, in the distance, see a strangely constructed shack. It just...leans weird. There are people milling around, and a couple of mossbacks. Apparently they've found Rance?
They talk with Rance (except Torneko, who finds a very comfy bed in the shack and goes down for a nap), and he's clearly confused. He seems to have forgotten...well, who he is, what he's doing here, his mossbacks' names. Trill talks with the mossbacks and learns that they're called Acorn and Butternut, and they don't seem to be missing any memories (not that mossbacks have long memories to begin with; they would very much like to get back to pulling the wagon, which they both enjoy).
But as they're talking, a figure in ragged clothes approaches (or appears?). Its hands are too long, its voice is soft, and it calls itself Oublie. It offers to help, but wants to bargain, and Opal recognizes it as a "dwindler," a creature that can slowly steal memories from others.
[There was a pixie named Niceshoes in here, that rode a night cat, but buggered if I can remember what he did during this scene.]
Bargaining, though, is what Cinderspark does. She negotiates with Oublie, offering up an ingredient she's carrying, some of the trinkets that Trill swiped (which Trill reluctantly volunteers), and, best of all, Timbertrod calls up an ancient memory of his race. The stakes are high, though - Cinderspark bargains not only for Rance and the mossbacks, but all of the other people trapped here. Some intense discussions follow, but Oublie eventually accepts the deal, and the characters leave with their prizes (and someone does remember to wake Torneko up).
They return to Mortimer and reunite him and Rance (though Rance doesn't remember him, but Mortimer is willing to make new memories with him now). They hitch the mossbacks up to the wagon, and follow the path with the crates, hoping to find them intact.
As they approach the end of the path, they hear someone huge weeping. They round the corner and, near the edge of a cliff, they find a...giant pixie? It looks like a pixie, but it's immense, and it's wearing really, really nice shoes. The crates are splayed out around it, and a couple of them have been cracked open.
They talk with the pixie (whose name is Swankyclogs), and he reveals that he was the smallest of the three brothers and wanted to be bigger. So he ate a couple of those ingredients and now he's too big, and wants to get small again! But not too small. He still wants to be bigger than his brothers.
The Marmeteers realize that the two crates he ate from were Wikenweed (which pulls dreams into the waking world) and Zephyr's Dew (which can alter reality). Eating those two things together must have brought his dream of being bigger to life, but in an uncontrolled way. Torneko gets him to focus on being the right size, while Trill helps him to think about balance ("not too, not too") while a bit more Zephyr's Dew is applied, and Swankyclogs shrinks to his normal size - maybe a bit bigger?
He calls up his mount, a sugarnewt named Glucose, and tells the Marmeteers to get these crates out of here; he doesn't trust them. At last the characters have everything put together, but what they don't have is enough time to get everything back. And how would they get the wagon down the cliff, anyway?
"We lick the cloud," says Trill. Gather everything together and make use of the time loop. They gather everything up, all hold hands, and...lick.
The character's gather round the table for breakfast pastries, only now there are two very perplexed mossbacks and a bunch of crates with them! Beulah has her ingredients, and is able to make the pastries for Nibella McQuaff!
The reviews are positive, though not exactly glowing. This only spurs Beulah, in the way of a true artist, to try harder in future, and the story of the Halfway Inn continues.
No comments:
Post a Comment