Campaign Log -- Day Ten

The 16th day of the month of Obad-Hai
The 110th year of the second Ravensblood dynasty

The next day, the PCs gather at Hiddlebatch’s chapel to try and figure out what to do with the fairy. They put it in their own cage, and Quimarel gathers up some herbs that she’s heard can be used to counteract many types of drugs, including this one. Tamarie uses her Alchemy skills to make… something… out of them. (Craft [alchemy]: 7) She seems unsure of whether she’s been successful, and Quimarel makes the call that if the alchemist isn’t sure, she probably shouldn’t feed it to tiny fairies. They decide to wait for it to wake up on its own.

Hiddlebatch goes back to its street-corner preaching, and is “surprised” to hear of an investigation being conducted over the apparent presence of harlots in the Royal Intelligence Corps last night.

Tamarie decides to wander into the Broken Stone for breakfast, where she can inconspicuously (riiiiight) knit in the corner and overhear any rumors that might be floating around. The bar-wench who brings her food, Yona, seems slightly shaken for some reason. Maybe she had a rough night or something.

Quimarel pre-emptively reports her entirely-fabricated side of the story to the authorities. She finds the Intelligence Corps operative assigned to look into the matter, a young-ish goblin in low-profile black & gray garments. “We were hired for an event… and it was quite an event. I don’t know who hired me exactly; it came through several different channels.” She gives a speech designed to convince him that someone else paid her to provide a distraction, and further insists that she was genuinely concerned about the morale of the people who defend our fine town. She is, after all, a pillar of the community.

She rolls a 12 on her Bluff check.

“Is that so, Miss… Smith?” The operative seems suspicious.

“Yes. We’re very good at what we do.”

“I’m sure you are. Can you perhaps describe the person who allegedly hired you?”

“He was a goblin. Didn’t give me his name, but he said he wanted to reward the brave soldiers at the Intelligence Corps, and I thought, ‘You know what? They do work very hard. They deserve a break.’” [Bluff: 22]

The operative thinks that she’s hiding something, but it sounds plausible. He spends some time grilling her and trying to get a description of this alleged goblin. Quimarel intentionally gives the most generic description of a goblin she possibly can.

Quimarel OOC: I’m not going to come out and say that they all look alike to me, but…

The operative eventually does a sketch of the “suspect” and decides his time would be better spent elsewhere.

The others settle down to wait for the Kech to come meet them at Hiddlebatch’s temple on the appointed day. Quimarel and Hiddlebatch, as the only spellcasters in the party, start examining the spell scrolls. There’s some discussion about how this works: as a divine spellcaster, Hiddlebatch can cast them from a scroll, but can’t learn them (house rule -- I think it’s more fun when more party members have access to consumable resources like scrolls). Quimarel, as a bard/rogue, could theoretically adapt them into bard spells if her arcane spellcaster level were higher -- she only has one or two levels in bard at this point. And there’s always the danger of a spell mishap.

They then debate casting Ruinous Gift on the glaive, on the basis that it would be funny to curse the Kech or their rakshasa masters. It is, however, decided that they will hold onto the scrolls until Quimarel can learn them, unless an emergency comes up.

Tamarie goes back to trying to brew up something to wake up their new captive fairy. It goes better this time (Craft [alchemy]: 21), and the atomie shakes itself into consciousness. “Hrml, hm, whoa. Who are you?”

[Note: everything involving the fairy is pure improvisation at this point. I added him into the vault at the last minute as window dressing, and didn’t expect the PCs to take him with them.]

Hiddlebatch replies, “That’s exactly what we were wondering about you. We found you, and, um, we were wondering what it was that you did that apparently upset some people.”
“Hm?”

Hiddlebatch OOC: Let’s see, do I have any spells that would help? I have… Blistering Invictus. [“Invective”, actually. Hiddlebatch’s player apparently can’t always read her own handwriting. She also notes that she has a spell called “Two Nes” -- i.e., “Tongues”]
Quimarel OOC: No! That sounds like a bad idea! I don’t even know what that is, but I think you shouldn’t cast it right now.

“My name is… Silvermoss.”
“And why would someone be upset with you?”
“I don’t know why anyone would be upset with me. I was just going about my business.”
“What is your business?”
“Okay, so I was going about my frolicking. And suddenly I was in a bag, and there were lots of colors…”

Quimarel OOC: How common are these guys?
GM: They’re not, like, ant-common, but if you were to wander around the wilderness for a few weeks, odds are you’d run into at least one of them. [Translation: they’re on my random encounter table.]
Quimarel OOC: How common are they as… spell components?
GM: … I’m sure you could use them for something.

Hiddlebatch continues the interrogation. “Have you heard of many of your people going missing lately?”
“No.”
“How important are you to your people?”
“I mean… I’m well-respected amongst my hive.”
“What do you do in your hive?”
“You know. Flit from blossom to blossom. I’m also very adept at playing amusing tricks on the larger races. And stabbing people.”
Quimarel sees an in. “So these tricks that you play. What’s the best one you’ve ever done? And by the way, can we offer you some food and drink?”
“I would love some food and drink.”
“What do fairies eat?”
“Got any honey?”

They bring him some honey, and Silvermoss goes on to tell a rambling story about filling some human traveller’s bag with poisonous snakes, which he considers hilarious. The PCs humor him.

Quimarel: Ah, the ol’ cobra-rope trick. Classic.

Hiddlebatch asks if he knows how long he’s been in that cage, which leads nowhere, since Silvermoss has only a rudimentary concept of time and he was drugged out of his mind for most of it. Hiddlebatch’s player takes some time to be confused by the fact that Silvermoss has no idea what date it was, but it becomes rapidly apparent that atomies don’t do the whole calendar thing at all.

“And you can’t think of any reason why anyone would want to take you captive?”
“No.”
The PCs decide this is going nowhere. Silvermoss demands and receives mead & nectar, and the PCs opt to keep him drunk and in a cage until they figure out how to follow up on this. The fact that they’ve rescued him from “drugged in a cage” into “drunk in a cage” does not pass them by. There is some discussion about what to do with him -- keeping him in the Squirting Squid is briefly suggested, but then Quimarel’s player says something about “the tiniest prostitute” and Hiddlebatch’s player makes an obscene comment about gerbils. They decide to keep him in Hiddlebatch’s chapel.

Quimarel: We’re going to go with our favorite standby: get him drunk and get him talking, then see what comes out.

They get a lot of “hilarious” prank stories, and really complicated stories about interpersonal fairy drama. The latter sounds like what you’d get if you put a bunch of sociopathic middle-schoolers in a Lord of the Flies scenario and dosed them all with hallucinogens.

Quimarel listens carefully to see if she can come up with any evidence that he played a prank on the wrong person or has any useful abilities that the RIC might have found interesting.

Hiddlebatch’s player has twigged to the fact that I’m making this up as I go along: “This feels like one of those times when the GM put some random thing in the description and we decided it was important. Like, ‘there’s a bell over here, and then we spend 48 hours trying to figure out what the bell does. ‘It just rings, guys, it RINGS!’ ‘No, it’s gotta be here for a reason.’ ‘Yes -- to RING!’”

From the stories Silvermoss tells, Quimarel is able to gather that he does have a few nifty fairy powers -- he can shrink people / objects, or turn invisible. She convinces him that he’s safest staying in the chapel with Hiddlebatch.

Hiddlebatch: Oh, and while we’re waiting for the Kech, Makpov should ask very casual questions to the people he’s having sex with.

Then everyone’s English-Department-grad-student reflexes kick in and they send Hiddlebatch to the town library to read up on atomies. Hiddlebatch spends the entire day there researching everything it can think of. It finds that atomies are generally thought of as a nuisance, that they’re extremely sneaky, and that there are very few reasons one would want to interact with them intentionally.

Quimarel OOC: Do we know any druid-ranger-type people we could ask about this?
GM: Not really, no.
Hiddlebatch OOC: Wait, no druids or rangers live in this town?
GM: They tend not to live in towns. It’s kind of their whole thing.
[Hiddlebatch’s player’s character in the previous campaign was a druid who started out as a rogue. She is generally referred to by Quimarel’s player as “the WORST druid”.]

Hiddlebatch decides to look up the history of the Flayed Fairy, and finds some local records. The story behind the name, apparently, is that while it was being built, a bunch of atomies kept harassing the goblins for giggles, and that eventually they got sick of it, caught one, killed it, and hung it on the building as a warning to others. They later dried and preserved the corpse, and still use it as a sign. As it dawns on the players that I mean there is an actual dead fairy hanging from their signpost, I have to remind them that this is not a nice town. The overall alignment is Chaotic Evil -- just in a very petty sort of way.

Hiddlebatch looks into historical records, and finds mention of atomies being pressed into service as scouts and spies. Specifically, goblins have been known to blackmail or extort atomies into working for them for as long as they can remember that they’re being extorted. It then goes back to its chapel and cheerfully relates the story of the Flayed Fairy, to Silvermoss’s moderate horror.

“Why are you telling me this? This is creepy!”
“I was just wondering if you’d heard of the place.”
“No!”
“Have you ever worked with our kind before?”
“I don’t think so.”

Quimarel and Hiddlebatch wonder if there’s something like the Eye of the Sleeper involved here, but Detect Magic turns up nothing. Tamarie knits him a little jumper, which makes him look slightly dorky and colorblind. (Craft check: 12) Silvermoss is not pleased with it.

Hiddlebatch OOC: We need to build him a place to live. Does anyone have Craft [home] or something?
Quimarel OOC: Or Knowledge [Martha Stewart]?
GM: I would not have given you this guy if I knew you were basically going to turn him into a gerbil. “Let’s make him a little home, with a plastic tunnel and a hamster wheel…”

Not recommended as a household pet.

The PCs put together a little house/prison/cage for him, with lots of mead.

Silvermoss: Thank you? This is a nice… gesture… though normally we live outside.

Eventually, the PCs decide to convince him to stay, unaware of his status as prisoner, until they can figure out something else.

Hiddlebatch OOC: Time passes in much this way?
GM: Time passes in much this way. Does anyone want to do anything not involving the… gerbil fairy?
Tamarie OOC: I want to knit a cover for his cage!
Quimarel OOC: Like a parakeet!

A few days pass, and eventually it’s time for the meeting with Illuvatum.