The Misfits conclude their aggressive negotiations with the fastest thief in the Fey and get embroiled in some Soggy political intrigue.

When last we left our heroes, they had rescued the most honorable knight, Sir Talavar, who happened to be a fairie dragon trapped in a birdcage. Then we rescued him again when we found the right key to unlock said birdcage. Later, Shammer the fairy Wizard/Warlock/Owl-Wrangler died after a serious misunderstanding with some will-o-wisps. Fortunately, a deus-ex-monkeyna showed up in the form of a chimpanzee that we assisted back in Session 1, who was able to resurrect the fallen fairy.

Finally, we ran afoul of the fastest footpad in the Fey, in the form of Agdon Longscarf. He is a bunny brigand who’s wicked fast and wields a ripe-nasty branding iron that makes him invisible to anyone he touches with it. I wanted to parlay with this pilferer, but we ended up picking a fight. And it’s not going well. Agdon is able to dodge most of our attacks; he’s already become invisible to our second-best fighter, plus Daithi and Serena are still missing. On top of all that, Agdon’s got 8 other rabbit robbers helping him, half of whom are hiding and sniping at us from afar. We are in serious trouble here.

During the break, I had an epiphany. Since the book brags about how you can run the whole adventure without ever getting into combat, it must mean that most every opponent we could face will have some sort of weakness. This is a common theme in nonsense literature, such as the Wicked Witch of the West’s lethal aversion to water. Here in the Fey, we’ve already learned that the hag Skabatha is horrified of people running “widdershins”, or counter-clockwise. It stands to reason that this uncatchable rabbit must have some sort of similar situation.

So, I came up with a plan. I am convinced that Agdon’s exorbitantly long, flowing scarf is the source of his power and his greatest liability. The DM has specifically drawn attention to it a number of times. On my next turn, I’m going to do everything I can to catch this singular swath of fabric and hopefully disable this rascally rapid rodent. But first, let’s find out what happened to Serena.

Last week, Serena cast a spell during combat, but her Tides of Chaos “ability” caused yet another random effect. In this case, she instantly lost 9 years off her age, turning her into a small child. The ramifications of this event are huge. Do her stats change? Can she still cast magic? Can she even lift a weapon? But before we could even grasp what the ramifications would be, Serena instantly disappeared. Gone! I was legitimately stunned. What just happened? Why did it happen? How did it happen? What do we do now?

I was absolutely, frickin stoked by this development. This could be the ultimate Split-The-Party scenario. The main group has to go on a quest to find and rescue their lost companion, all while she is on a solo mission to escape and find out where she is. This would probably be a logistical nightmare (I still would have done it) and we would have no idea how long we’d be separated while the solo adventurer misses out on the main story. (I’d absolutely still do it.) We didn’t do it.

Instead, Serena finds herself in an elaborate and elegant child’s play room, filled with toys and dollhouses and such. No other children are around though. Before Serena can investigate her surroundings, an oddly familiar, yet unrecognizable and indescribable woman walks into the room. “Oh, no, no. This won’t do at all. You don’t belong here. You need to return to your friends. Let me fix this.” With a wave of her hand, Serena is once again 16 years old and is instantly returned to the combat she just left.

Aww, that’s it? I guess that’s cool and all. While the moment was quirky, odd, peculiar, and it turns out, suspicious (more on that later), I’m a little underwhelmed by these instant fixes to our character actions. Nothing we screw up seems to have any real consequences.

So, Serena is back in the fight and it’s almost my turn to enact my master plan. I just have to survive one round of Agdon hopping around, but he’s stuck in the mud below the walkways of this swamp. Not that it did me any good. Agdon bounds of the hole he just fell through and immediately smacks me upside the head with his branding iron. Now I can never sense his presence. I can’t see him or his precious scarf. Neither can I smell him or hear him. This sucks. I can’t do my plan. I can’t do anything. Plus, he stole another item from me, my coil of rope. I’m trying to wrack my brain to see if there is any way I can still be useful in this fight, but then something happens that makes the whole issue moot.

Faux the thief, who has been hovering out of melee range like all the fairies always do, fires an arrow at the rapscallion rodent and hits it with a massive crit, killing the speed demon instantly and pining him to a tree like a rag doll, his eloquent scarf limply wafting in the breeze. Not that I could see any of it. BTW, I asked the DM if my hunch about the scarf was correct, and it was. Dammit!

All of the other bunnies are aghast. Without their leader, they have no will to fight. In my best Dread Pirate Robert voice, I command them to “Drop your swords.” And they do. I ask one of my companions to retrieve my things and Pop’s arrow from the dead Agdon and they are returned. Agdon also dropped his branding iron when he died. No one else wanted it, so I added it to my stuff. I am definitely the hoarder of this group. We tried to get Agdon’s blue scarf, but the knot was impossible to unravel and no amount of force could remove it. Needless to say, several of my less chivalrous companions suggested chopping off his head, but then decided to just leave it. I’m glad that desecration of the dead will not be one of our achievements. Yet.

We order the rest of Agdon’s not so merry men to take us back to their hideout. A hop, skip, and a jump later, we are at the bunny brigands’ headquarters, which is an enormous tree stump in the middle of the swamp from which countless walkways, gangways, and plankways (?) radiate out of like a giant spiders web. There are more rabbits here, men, women, and kittens (this is the correct term.) Daithi is also here, sitting on a stump, gleefully eating a rabbit leg while the other bunnies look on in horror. “Hey, guys. Where have you been? Do you want some stew?”

“Daithi, how did you get here?

“I have no idea.”

“Where have you been this whole time?”

“I have no idea.”

“How did you get separated from us?”

“I have no idea.”

Well, this is certainly helpful. In fact, this whole “mystery” of Daithi’s disappearance will turn into this big, weird, trivial thing that only affects the other half of the table, seems to have nothing to do with the main story, and our half of the table can’t hear what the other half is doing, leaving us completely in the dark. This split that we have in the party actually ends up being a legit problem later on. But, for now, Daithi is back in the fold, so that’s good. We give the now disbanded Agdon gang a stern lecture about the error of their ways. We convince them to give up their thieving days or we’ll come back and put them out of business permanently. We also find Jingle Jangle’s soggy sack of ‘shrooms and tell the rabbits that they can start their road to repentance by returning this bag of truffles.

Enforcing the Rules of Reciprocity, we tell the brigands that by not killing them, we have given them the gift of life, therefore they owe us a gift in return. Mostly just to get rid of us, we each receive a random trinket. We get fairie dragon playing cards, gossamer shawls that glow in the dark, a pixie plushie that sings, and a clockwork dragonfly. I get a shiny red mushroom that jingles when you shake it, and my unofficial squire, “Pop”, gets a small empty bag that produces a single potato every day (nice to know we won’t starve.) But the coolest gift went to Mara, who gets a strange crystal orb with something swirling around inside. One of the more fascinating things about this adventure is the sheer volume of strange, useless and not-so-useless trinkets one can find.

Travelling onward, we have been told to seek out the Inn At The End Of The Road. I wonder if this is related to the Restaurant At The End Of The Universe? (RIP Douglas Adams.) Regardless, we’ve been told that this place is a safe haven and we may even find some answers. In fact, one member in our group was instructed specifically to find this place. I expected to find a magical Travelling Inn that basically teleports around and you just have to be in the right place at the right time. I was not expecting to hear a thunderous stampede as the Inn lumbered into view. The Inn is a monstrous Travelling Inn that literally walks from place to place using hundreds of human feet. Daithi politely asks, “Does anyone stop me before I attack this thing?”

Before we roll initiative, let’s make fun of Daithi’s character for a bit. Daithi’s player, Michael, rolled ridiculously high stats (16+) except for one, a 5. He placed that 5 in Wisdom. He did not place the 5 in Intelligence because that would affect his ability to cast spells. How exactly should one play a low wisdom different from a low intelligence? Don’t know. And don’t even get me started on the fact that 5e allows for a Barbarian spellcasting subclass. (Argh! Anyone can be anything. No restrictions! No limitations! No logical narrative reason for anything. The barbarian’s infamous mistrust of magic? Screw that; I wanna rage and cast fireball! Everyone is special. But once everyone is special, then no one is.)

Anywho, Daithi has a 5 in Wisdom, and he is played like the village idiot, constantly doing thoughtless things. Now the dumb barbarian is a long-standing trope of D&D, but, oh my god, is it easy to overkill. Worse, Daithi is convinced that his high hit points and superhuman stats will carry him through any repercussions; collateral damage to the rest of the party be damned. Even worser, Michael is a player with schemes (as am I), but most of his schemes revolve around doing dumb things. It’s usually pretty funny, but it’s tough to get things done. This won’t really come to bear until later, (and one of the times is absolutely brilliant, stay tuned), but I wanted to lay the groundwork for this here. For now, we convince Daithi that the big, scary house monster is a friend and to put Gene away (Gene is his “magic” halberd that talks to Daithi, and only Daithi.)

Despite the inherent insanity of a living, walking building, this was the only time that the adventure felt normal. We had a lovely conversation with the owner of the Inn, Tsu Harabaz, while we ate a delicious stew (no rabbit meat this time.) Naturally, the conversation revolved around “The List”.

“The List” is a beast all its own. There are a ton of ridiculous fantasy NPC names thrown at the players right from the start of the adventure. All of them are out of context, filled with misheard syllables, deliberate mispronunciations, and misspellings. And most characters have multiple names with no indication that they are connected and many characters are not even encountered until near the end of the adventure. Because it is so convoluted and you never know which random NPC has the info you need, every single roleplaying encounter turns into a fishing expedition and the only bait we have is this list of over 20 different names and places.

To save time and avoid the tedium of repeating “What do you know about this person?”, “What do you know about that place?” ad nauseum, Thane came up with “The List”. Thane’s character, Shammer, simply hands over the list to whomever we are “talking” to, and then the DM decides which tidbit of additional info he wants to give us. The problem is that many of the players despise this list. What started as a funny shortcut has turned into a game-halting crutch.

First, it completely kills the art of roleplaying a conversation and reduces every encounter to the DM just reading exposition. Second, it is excessively overused. Every single NPC, every single time, this list interrupts the flow of the game. The random unnamed bunny doesn’t know anyone on this list; put it away. Third, it quickly became irrelevant. By the end of our talk with the innkeeper, we would have a good understanding of the major players, and yet “The List” is still played at every single encounter, every single time. But it proved very useful here.

According to Tsu, the land of Prismeer was once rules by Zybilna, a powerful wizard. She was defeated by the three hags who call themselves the Hourglass Coven, who then divided up the land into three territories. The land we are in, Hither, is ruled by Bavlorna Blightstraw, who is referred to as Slack-Jawed Lorna. She is a foul odious frog-like witch who lives in a cottage in the center of DownFall, the only civilized village around, about a day’s journey from here. The other lands are Thither which is run by Skabatha Nightshade, also called the Toymaker, and the land of Yon which is ruled by the Puppetmaster, whose real name is Endelyn Moongrave. To travel between the lands we need to find a guide and there just so happens to be a guide named Clapperclaw, who lives in DownFall and can take us to Thither.

We also learn that Zybilna is frozen in time in her palace and that we need to find a thing called the Alicorn to free her. Tsu also gives us (because we asked) the first full explanation of the Rule of Three. There are three rules by which everyone in the Fey must act in accordance. The Rule of Hospitality requires that everyone must be polite to all guests in their home. I’m hoping this applies to the hags as well. The Rule of Ownership dictates that taking anything without the rightful owner’s permission is an unforgivable crime. I’m sure we’re going to break this rule before long. Last, the Rule of Reciprocity requires that if anyone gives you a gift, then you must accept it and offer something in return. Finally, now that we know the rules, we can start screwing with them.

We also get a large amount of personal backstory into Shammer’s character and motivations. Sadly, much of this involved a hushed conversation between the DM, Thane’s Shammer, and oddly, Michael’s Daithi. And again, since this involved the other side of our enormous table, I had a hard time following along.

I know that Shammer has no memory of his childhood, and apparently he was actually raised here at The Inn At The End Of The Road. Just recently, Shammer made a warlock pact but he does not know to whom he made it; a truly terrifying proposition. Daithi and whomever hijacked him for a week is somehow involved and we have only a shadowy, black image drawn by a not wholly coherent Daithi as a clue. I invite either Thane or Michael to share more about this story in the comments.

Literally moving on, Tsu is very happy that we are trying to restore the land back to what it once was and offers us free room and board for the night while the Inn travels the distance to DownFall. I was the only one who felt obligated by the Rules of Reciprocity and repaid Tsu’s kind gift with the age altering mushrooms I found last week. I really got to build up my stockpile of useless trinkets if I have to keep giving them away for every little thing I’m given.

For some, the night is plagued by more nightmares. Frankly, these are becoming more of a nuisance and less the quirky inconvenience when they first occurred. The restrictions are more onerous, but they are inconsistently adhered to and often ignored. Currently only Daithi, Starshine, and Mara suffer still, but Daithi is on a possible path to actual death by exhaustion if he keeps failing his rolls. In the morning, Daithi’s skin tone has inexplicably changed from green to blue. Apparently, that’s a thing.

At long last, we reach the end of the road, in this land at least. The Inn deposits us on the outskirts of DownFall, before lifting itself out of the ground and walking away into the mere. The bayou feeds into a small swampy lake, shrouded in mist and mire. We can barely make out the rough outline of a few outcroppings and small islands that dot this gloomy pond. We can hardly see, but we can hear an incessant croaking of frogs; hundreds and hundreds of frogs, all braying an insidious chant of burps and belches. The guttural cacophony gets louder as we trudge further into the fog.

We come upon a dilapidated dock. Apparently, we were supposed to row our way here. We are greeting by several bullywug (frog-men) guards who speak to us in Sylvan, “Greetings and Salutations. Welcome to DownFall.” Durwyn is the only one who does not speak Sylvan, I guess I’m the only one who wanted to play as Dorothy, and everyone else chose to be a Munchkin. I stand at the ready, oblivious to the conversation, while someone else runs point.

Jameela (Serena) is chomping at the bit to take the reins. In her typical breathless fashion, she runs through the encounter a breakneck speed, “HelloyesIamSerenaor maybeI’mStarshineThesearemyfriendsWewouldliketoseeBavlornaormaybethekingWouldyoutakeustothemplease?” Somehow the bullywugs can interpret this and ask us to follow them. We ran past the next few encounters with barely a pause. First, there was a giant gas balloon that was being repaired by some bullywug mechanics. The only thing the balloon was missing was a giant sign that read “Omaha State Fair”. If you get this reference then this adventure was made for you.

Next, we came to a small tributary with several stepping stones across it. In Sylvan, our escorts tell everyone to avoid the third rock, which everyone does except Serena who insists on giving the rock a hug. The rock turns out to be living creature, which I recognized as a Galeb Duhr because I’ve memorized the Monster Manual, but I kept this to myself, for now. The rock, whose name I think was Caleb, Caleb the Galeb, wanted nothing to do with our swift speaking sorcerer, but she continued on, talking a mile a minute and maybe singing to it? It all happened so very fast.

Another interesting thing occurred here though. Several at the table felt that I needed to make a roll to see if my character would know to jump the third rock. Since I didn’t speak Sylvan how would my character know to do this? At the time, I was baffled by this. My character is a smart, intuitive person. Even without being fluent in the language, I would still understand a little. And when everyone jumps over the same rock, I would choose to follow suit. If I were playing a sub-par character, I might choose to blithely step on the rock monster’s head. But either way, I choose my path.

That’s when I realized that some of these players roll for all sorts of things beyond the success or failure of an action. Often, they roll to see what their character chooses to do. Does my character believe what this NPC (or even another player) is telling me? Roll dice. The DM said that the tracks are going down the left path, but does my character take the right path by mistake? Roll dice. Does my character remember a specific detail at the right time, even though I, the player do? Roll dice. Allow me to preface that there is nothing strictly wrong with how they play, and I understand their reason for doing it and keeping player knowledge distinct for character knowledge. Plus, it is usually just a thing they do amongst themselves only on their half of the table. But I find it odd that any player would choose to limit his own ability to choose.

Serena tried to hurry past the next building which was a blackened, charred factory of some sort, when I chose to “lose my way” again and went inside. The others were compelled to follow. Inside was a frantic bullywug who shoved a bucket of water into my hands and pointed to a bunch of little living sparks of fire hopping around looking for something else to ignite. “Put ‘em out before they burn down the whole town,” the bullywug cries!

Although I don’t speak Sylvan, I still chose to understand what he wanted (no dice rolls needed) and chased one of the pyroclastic buggers around the charred building. The rest of the party followed suit and grabbed a bucket, except for Shammer who used his Mold earth spell to suffocate one flaming mote, and Serena used Mage Hand to grab a flaming coal and throw it in a bucket. Finally, I cornered one and unleashed my inner Dorothy to splash my animated ember with my bucket of water. Sadly, the spark extinguished itself with just a little “hiss” and not moans of “What a world, what a world…” And if you know who says this line and when, then this adventure was really written for you.

Apparently, the bullywug we just helped is a noble-born royalty, Duke Ickrind. We learn later that virtually everyone here proclaims some useless noble title, but we don’t know this yet. As a reward for our assistance with the fire brigade, Duke Ickrind presents me with a brass brooch shaped like a fly with fluttering wings. This brooch bestows the honorific of Friend to the Soggy Court, and will be useful in our negotiations with the current monarch, King Gullop XIX. I add it to my pile of stuff. We also learn here that the frogs can actually all speak Common, but had not bothered until now.

After that little detour, Serena is back at the helm and its full steam ahead. We ran to the next area so fast, I think we beat our bullywug escorts there. There is a wide plank bridge that is gruesomely lined on both sides with dozens of decapitated bullywug heads on spikes. It turns out that these are all the Heads of State, or at least they were, back when they were rulers before they were deposed or overthrown. Even more macabre, all the heads talk, usually complaining about the current regime and how useless the king is.

Today they are berating a strange amalgamation of a person. It’s a 3-foot-tall scarecrow with blue lobster claws for hands and a gourd for a head. It’s not the scarecrow I was expecting, but he is very adorable. Serena knew exactly whom she wanted to talk to. She ignored the squawking heads and ran up to the scarecrow.

“OhhelloYoumustbeClapperclawArentyoujustthecutestthingeverOohIjustwannashakeyourhead.”

“Please don’t,” Clapperclaw meekly replies. Serena ignores him and shakes his head.

“OohYouvegotsomethingrattlingaroundinsidethereIsitcoinsorbuttons?Bythewaydoyouknowthewayoutofthislandandintothenext?”

“Please stop. This isn’t my real head. I was tricked by Bavlorna into giving away my beautiful stag skull head,” Clapperclaw says forlornly.

“YouwantanewheadWecandothatShammergivemeyourdisguisepaintThereyougoWhatdoyouwanttolooklike?” As she proceed to slather this hapless NPC with layers of paint.

“Please stop touching me. I just want my old head back,” Clapperclaw (and in part, the DM) begged. “Then yes, I can lead you to the Land of Thither.” I never felt so bad for any NPC before today, but it wasn’t worth the argument that would ensue over a not-a-real-person to stop it.

“ThatsgreatByeWellseeyoulater.” As Serena skips off to the next plot point.

I was reminded of a scene in Groundhog Day. Bill Murray plays a guy who has to relive the same day over and over again until he finally figures out everything he needs to do and plays out the day to perfection. Eventually he gets to the point where he knows every possible outcome, so he runs through the entire encounter (scene), hitting all the required bits, as franticly as possible just to get to the good part. That’s what this whole Frog Town section has felt like.

Finally, we get to the good part. The King’s Court is held in an open-air gazebo called the Sinking Palace. Dozens of frogs in high courtly dress are lazing about gossiping and bragging, all while being generally obsequious and subservient to the frog squating on the throne in the center of the “Palace”. King Gullop XIX sits as pompously as a frog can, surrounded by knights, heralds, servants, and sycophants; clearly delighted by his elevated status. My favorite trapping of the king was his pet crocodile, Snoodle, complete with a laced ruff collar.

We immediately committed a serious faux-pas by not having our own herald (in this case, our bard) announce our presence to the court. The king chastised us for our breech of protocol but once he noticed the brooch we just earned, he magnanimously permitted us to proceed. Frankly, I was very hesitant to role-play this encounter. I was afraid to pledge allegiance to anyone here in the Fey and I didn’t want to get bound into any sort of promise or contract until I had more Intel on the people or frogs we were dealing with. In a rare moment of indecision, I stayed quiet throughout the entire encounter.

The same could not be said for Serena, who plunged headlong into negotiations with the amphibious potentate. The moment I dreaded came quickly enough when the King insisted that he could not render aid to someone who has not sworn at oath to me, or… Without a moment’s hesitation, Serena blurts out, “Illswearanoath!”

‘sigh’ Here we go. But it turned out to relatively benign. Serena is dubbed Lady Serena, Knight of the court. Shammer’s familiar owl jumped on the bandwagon too and became Sir Owl. Notably, Shammer himself did not become a knight, just his owl. Regardless, as our first official duty, we are immediately given a quest to deliver a book to the hag who lives in the center of the “kingdom”, Skabatha. This is convenient; we were heading there eventually anyway, after we explore the rest of your lovely swamp, er, kingdom.

The book turns out to be a huge tome, a diary really, hundreds of pages long and filled with name after name of people whom have insulted or upset Skabatha in some way, and the revenge she took or plans to take upon them. The book is obviously titled The Big Book of Bad Blood. Our own Daithi is in the book and we learn that Skabatha has stolen Daithi’s smile. I had not noticed, but looking back, I realized that the player, Michael, never smiled at the table, so kudos to that bit of subtle acting.

 

 

While all this is going on, the DM surreptitiously handed Mara, playing the fairy warlock Rose, a note which read, “Find Illig, the Baron of Muckstump. The revolution lives!” Up to this point, Mara has been content to be a passive participant but now she is front and center of a possible coup. Excellent! Now I just have to wait for the player to let her character let my character in on her little secret, even though I already know about it, IRL. This is way I love role-playing. You’ll never get this level of nonsense playing Monopoly. Not that you should ever play Monopoly, that game sucks.

 

Next week, we ignore all the content that the DM prepared and make a beeline straight to the end of the chapter.

As always, Live by your wits, die by the dice, and Game On!

Beware of advice from experts, pigs, and members of Parliment – Kermit the Frog