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We have our missing lunatic back! Which means we are once again:
Celyn Bettws: fairy-touched lunatic rogue/cleric of the god of (to pick the things relevant to this) hope, madness, things out of season, chaos, luck, risktakers, theatre people, fate.
Viepuck: orphan child bard/warlock lunatic with an eldritch flying octopus familiar, survivor of an orphan-sacrificing scheme.
Izgil Moonseeker: dwarven moon sorceror lunatic who is collecting relevant vibes.
Robin of Abenfyrd, of the Order of the Charitable Wanderer: the paladin. (Of the god of travel, trade, hospitality, charity, outsiders.)
Writing this up mostly as a service to the GM and for the entertainment of the friends who listen to me natter. ;)
To bridge between last session and this one we did a bunch of stuff in email at various points in the timeline. This produced many results.
Prior to the events of the session, we passed through the destroyed town of Eftly with Odo, who was from there and whose family died in the village's destruction. We dealt with his round of grief-induced madness (Robin actually talked to him because Robin has sensible social skills; Celyn stood watch in his vibe as protector of madmen and was rather "I'm familiar with madness from unbearable pain. His is different from mine but my god can hold both of us" about it) and then proceeded on to the actual plot of the last bit.
Said plot goes here.
After we slogged out of the lake, Robin and Celyn had a personal conversation after Greymalkin was done lecturing his paladin, then the party went back up to the house of Corinne the wizard who had assisted with the relevant quest and did all the relevant conversations with various people about what had happened and needed to be done, and then Robin and Celyn had more conversation.
All the necessary wrangling with townsfolk here done, we proceeded to Fellburn to find that the skeleton war was well underway and the skeletons were definitely losing. The Duke and his forces had set up an excellent battle machine for destroying undead - a spell that if they crossed it would do immense damage to them and a means of driving them into the relevant area - and were well on their way to breaking the siege. A paladin on a flying mount was harrying the forces from above; Viepuck eventually recognized her as the person who had saved him from the orphan-murdering scheme. The party joined in as skirmishers because we spotted an area skeletons were leaking and figured plugging the leak was sensible.
After the battle the people with healing powers did our best to help with triage and saving as many of the wounded as possible. Viepuck went to the town to say who we were to the authorities there. A powerful cleric of the Night Queen, who had been responsible for the effective trap zone, greeted the party, recognizing we've been part of this fight more than today, and blessed us all appropriately.
The party managed to locate the very busy flying paladin in and around collecting information at the Duke's encampment. Robin made introductions of the party, commenting that it was good to find other people actually doing things productively because things have been rather a lot. Viepuck stammered through thanking her for saving him from the orphan-sacrificing ring; she did not put two and two together until he explained that he was one of the few survivors of said event. She spoke to him about the other adventurers who had helped defeat the evil wizard in question, so that he could add them to his appropriate religious remembrances.
Finally we got into the audience with the Duke, who had some business to clear up regarding the governance of the town he just de-sieged, whose previous ruler died in the attack in part because his son was a coward. Son was deposed in favor of daughter. The various bits of army have been sent back to their proper places with orders to protect the people - the Duke is pissed off about various army orders sending troops willy-nilly places - but the Duke himself has to scramble and get to the capital, where he was summoned, before his absence is deemed treasonous.
The party is introduced. Celyn makes sure he is aware there is a pattern of the army being summoned places right before attacks hit there, which he looks quite sharp about but does not comment on explicitly. Celyn also attempts to bless him - invoking multiple domains of his god - and is left with a feeling he later explains as "trying to keep a candle going in a lantern with no glass, in a windstorm", which he explains to the Duke at the time as the danger being too great for his capacity, please take this warning as another blessing. After this effort he is wiltingly exhausted, and Viepuck is more explicit about concerns.
After the audience, the party drifts out to the Oracle of Hope, a strange pilgrimage site which sits atop the hill the Duke was using as his command center. There are pilgrims coming out from the town, and everyone has a chance to sit and recover and basically peoplewatch for a bit, up until Celyn spots someone he recognizes and can't figure out why she's there. Viepuck catches that he's muttering about the theatre troupe he used to work with, and he - after taking Robin's hand - explains that he and the lady in question have a complicated history, but he wants to know that his friends in the theatre are okay so he'll flag her down. She reacts to seeing him with shock and demands to know what he's mixed up in.
Of all the questions that are fundamentally unanswerable that's pretty high on the list? But the Players are well and the woman wants to talk to Celyn in particular, so he pries himself up and gets a message from one of the fey of his homeland delivered by a particularly unreliable messenger. He sends her off with his blessing, reassurances, and messages for his friends, despite being visibly exasperated by her foolishness around fairies. He has a cryptic message to chew on now.
Then we had play today:
We did seek out the paladin afterwards to tell her that we were worried about the danger of the situation. She made clear she was going back with the Duke because she had worries, but basically her personal opsec meant she wasn't going to explain her thirteenth level plans to a fifth level party she'd just met. Which was reasonable enough, just we Have A Concern.
After all the chaos settles out, the party hits the road and heads back towards our base of operations in Cleenseau.
Then of course we got the band back together by promptly reuniting with our missing lunatic, who we encountered on the road. He and some other adventurers had been clearing out undead dregs. Several of those adventurers were going to head north in order to figure out what had happened to their friends; one remained, because she was concerned about the fey-realm portal we had previously discovered. So a bunch of them went one way, and she went to keep watch over the portal and see if there was a pattern to it doing anything, and we all went to figure out what nonsense had happened in our absence.
Mostly there was a lot of petty administrative bullshit to work on to start with, which is primarily Robin's problem, with a side of being Viepuck's problem as Robin's squire, social secretary, and too-many-people filter. Celyn checked in on the local Wyrdling temple in our secondary base of operations then tried to be helpful with administrative nonsense.
As we were dealing with petty grievances and generalized nonsense, we started getting news from the capital. None of which was great! Because yes, sure, a tax levy to deal with this whole situation is reasonable, but the part where the scrambled army orders is being blamed on the people who were trying to follow them not so much, and definitely blaming the Duke for how things were handled in his demesne when he only managed to deal with the problem basically by mutiny because he was being sabotaged every which way was not on. Also the undead rising problem was blamed on some necromancers who had infiltrated the Night Queen temple, several senior priests had been put to death, and several were wanted for question - particularly including the flying paladin and the cleric who had set up the 'destroys all the undead' thing. We are cross. We send a letter to our ally there, who had been called away because apparently they were reviewing her claim to her title because reasons.
The whole thing appears to be set up to neutralize anyone who has been effective about the problems. The party is (at least currently) outside of the relevant hierarchies which means the problem in the court - we theorize some powerful warlock of the Gloomshaper, an enemy of the fey queen of Tyrwingha, where Celyn and Robin are from, who has claimed this area, apparently - cannot use that sort of order-giving to mess with us. Messing with us will have to be more direct.
We start setting up counter-rumors talking about the Duke's heroism and so on with Izgil puttering around going "Hmmm, but this doesn't make sense" about the particularly not-sensey bits.
We have also heard news from the western part of the area - the roads aren't so great that way - about other undead attacks and stupid army orders and how that's being dealt with. Eventually Viepuck sends his (fast swimming speed) eldritch octopus upriver to investigate what happened there.
The rumors about the necromancers came with the warning that apparently the ritual they did was supposed to raise the dead every new moon, so we spent the week or so remaining before that training our local troops to deal with magical combat situations, monsters, and the like, using illusions and no-damage magic. It seemed the thing to do. Izgil talked to his dwarven friends who were working on siege engines - and who really would rather be working on telescopes - about finding a compromise position and working on constructing solar mirror weapons ala Greek ship-destroyers.
As we were working on that, scouts reported a rag-tag band of Sembaran scouts coming up to the bridge over the river, so we went out to meet them after hastily constructing a banner for Robin to display. They turned out to be from the detachment of the army that had been sent away from Fellburn before the skeleton siege turned up, who had been sent wild-goose-chasing into the badlands and had encountered a series of unfortunate events. After Izgil surreptitiously checked them to see if there were signs of magical effects or other issues, their scout approached him to ask what he was doing; the resulting conversation led to him saying he thought they had been followed by some weird invisible singing creature, to which the party collectively went, "yeah, hostile fey action, we've been waiting for more of that".
The scout: Fey? But we weren't in Tyrwingha.
Celyn: [exasperated sigh, eyes rolled heavenward]
(Apparently the only thing that reliably gets Celyn grumpy is people failing fairy 101. But he is at this point a sort of slowly simmering kettle of perpetual low-grade exasperation about that.)
(Well, that and the eel. That made him mad. In most senses of the word, really.)
Anyway we reassured the scout that he wasn't crazy, it was the world doing so, and if he was not-seeing things like that again he should please tell us. Also would he please help train our forces in not-seeing things like that?
Then we discussed the need to add to Robin's Instructions for Undead Uprising Prevention an appendix of Celyn's Hostile Fairy Management Advice, at which Celyn was vocally frustrated until Robin got him to calm down and stop being grumpy about the people who didn't grow up with this stuff.
Viepuck's familiar reported in that the town it was sent to investigate tasted sad and angry and chaotic and human, and after determining we couldn't get it to give a message reliably, we tried for an unreliable message. unfortunately the problem with a six-month-old eldritch octopus is it's not great at a lot of things, so for example when Viepuck tried o talk to it about Ida, our local ally, it reported there were six to ten Idas there! They have the same vibe, you see! Viepuck tells it to tell one of the other Idas to write to Ida, and to do it as a dog so it wouldn't scare people, and got back a sense of cheerful satisfaction at a job well done, so ... okay!
As morale-based preparation for the possible undead uprising, Robin organizes a religious rally, basically, to provide spiritual bolstering to the local people. Celyn offers to help; Robin asks him to offer a blessing, Celyn meeps a bit in the "you are a much better speaker than I am" way; Robin assures him that people respect him too, they appreciate the Wyrdling's blessings, you can do it.
(Stats-based perspective here: Robin charisma 16 and actual skill at public speaking; Celyn charisma 12, no relevant skills, gives impression ranging from 'daft' to 'possibly mad but probably not dangerous' most of the time. Both common impressions of Celyn are incorrect in wildly different directions.)
Robin delivers his speech on the virtues of charity and mutual support; Celyn backs that up with a bit about finding hope in each other. Robin inducts Odo into his knightly order. Izgil lights up the event with magical moonlight just to nail the theatre of it all. After extensive celebration and generalized bonhomie, there is some sleep, until the alarms go off at 4am about invading undead. One, a skeletal force consisting of a bunch of orc skeletons led by an ogre skeleton that seem familiar to us, and two, some zombies staggering out of the local haunted forest. Overall, a bit dregs-y but still a problem to deal with, especially since the village next to the forest is largely unprotected.
We split the party: Viepuck and Izgil take some cavalry to go harry the skeletons with the goal of bringing them in range of the town wall where the townsfolk can contribute to their defeat (and to test the catapults), while Robin and Celyn take the infantry and a small contingent of light cav to take out the zombies. Both enemy forces are eliminated; the only fatality on the part of the living is one guy's horse. Rinault the acting lord who really wants to be In On The Action got to beat up a zombie and is talking himself up as a hero (Celyn actually finished it off and is letting him have his win).
So now we have dealt with that, have a month clear before we are worried about it potentially happening again, and are working on our plans to go figure out where the hell the baroness is, who is supposed to be in charge here, and who has not sent any word anywhere since she was installed and who may be hiding in the hills which are, currently, reputed to have unsolved zombies. (This is where our allies went to investigate.) One of our allies is keeping an eye on the fey portal that we discovered and is not happy about its apparent behaviors.
Aaand... our checkins with local villages do not turn up any undead attacks but do turn up the tax collector. So we go to figure out what's up with that. There are protocols for this.
It turns out the tax collector is not following the protocols. (There is a set amount he is supposed to collect, and he's trying to get more than that; there are set people and procedures for this, and he's basically trying to extort cash from randos on the road. Randos on the road include the party.)
It also turns out that the tax collector is someone Viepuck recognizes ... from the whole orphan-murdering ring thing. Viepuck, who has a thing that lets him do some telepathic communication, informs the party, "He's evil!" each in turn, just before the guy starts trying to do a shakedown on the group, starting with Robin.
Robin is unimpressed by evil.
The tax collector is aggravated that Robin is not impressed with him. We all have a bad attitude at him. Viepuck settles back to read his mind while we are uncooperative.
Robin gets to be fabulous:
Tax collector: Are you resident here?
Robin, coldly: I am Sir Robin of the Order of the Charitable Wanderer I am not resident anywhere.
Tax collector: But surely you wish to contribute to the common defense?
Robin, glancing indicatively at his mud-coated armour from the fight against the zombies: I. Contribute. Regularly.
Celyn asked what news of the baroness. We haven't heard anything, after all. Izgil chimes in with a, "For months." The tax collector continues to try to get us to cough up some cash right up until Viepuck suddenly comes out with local property law about standard procedures for tax collection in this regard and makes clear that he's aware the guy is squeezing for more he should and keeping half.
The guy flinches minutely - Celyn spots it - and proceeds to tell Viepuck he's nuts. Viepuck meanwhile has decided to call out the guy for his accomplice status in the whole orphan-murdering ring thing and adds fraud and banditry to it. Celyn adds a, "Do you really think you can lie to the Wyrdling?" but the guy is running.
Robin teleports in front of him.
The guy dodges around Robin.
Celyn teleports in front of him and lacking a clever one-liner or any actual intimidation skill says "Boo." This does not work, but Celyn can in fact do this all day, more or less, and plans to.
Robin manages to grab the guy's horse's bridle. Viepuck puts some people to sleep. Two of the strongbox guards make a break for it. One of the other ones starts to chase them. Chaos continues and is only enhanced by the moment when - to the startlement of every human present - Robin suddenly doubles in size, which makes it a lot easier to control the horse, for sure. (Every human present because it was Izgil who cast it and he is not human.)
Robin has this perpetual problem that the rest of the party keeps making his reputation grow but this is perhaps more literal than average.
In any case, we apprehend the apparent crooks, get the help of the honest guards, and head back to Cleenseau to figure out what the fuck to do with them. Which, after a trial, turns out to be 'execute the ringleader and his buddy, get the other two bandits who weren't in on it and one of whom turned state's evidence if only under the influence of magic to join the local army, and return the money to the lord of Beury who is confused until we explain that we want to make sure he has cash for the legitimate tax collector'.
Now we are off to figure out wtf is up with the baroness.
After we broke up we got (in email) a missive from the town we'd sent the familiar to, in which a local captain reported that a purple octopus popped out of the fireplace, covered his secretary in ink, scrawled 'IDA CLEENSEAU NEWS NOW' on the desk, turned into a dog, licked his hand, and loped out with tail-wagging cheerfulness.
So now we know what the familiar thinks of as a job well done.
Celyn Bettws: fairy-touched lunatic rogue/cleric of the god of (to pick the things relevant to this) hope, madness, things out of season, chaos, luck, risktakers, theatre people, fate.
Viepuck: orphan child bard/warlock lunatic with an eldritch flying octopus familiar, survivor of an orphan-sacrificing scheme.
Izgil Moonseeker: dwarven moon sorceror lunatic who is collecting relevant vibes.
Robin of Abenfyrd, of the Order of the Charitable Wanderer: the paladin. (Of the god of travel, trade, hospitality, charity, outsiders.)
Writing this up mostly as a service to the GM and for the entertainment of the friends who listen to me natter. ;)
To bridge between last session and this one we did a bunch of stuff in email at various points in the timeline. This produced many results.
Prior to the events of the session, we passed through the destroyed town of Eftly with Odo, who was from there and whose family died in the village's destruction. We dealt with his round of grief-induced madness (Robin actually talked to him because Robin has sensible social skills; Celyn stood watch in his vibe as protector of madmen and was rather "I'm familiar with madness from unbearable pain. His is different from mine but my god can hold both of us" about it) and then proceeded on to the actual plot of the last bit.
Said plot goes here.
After we slogged out of the lake, Robin and Celyn had a personal conversation after Greymalkin was done lecturing his paladin, then the party went back up to the house of Corinne the wizard who had assisted with the relevant quest and did all the relevant conversations with various people about what had happened and needed to be done, and then Robin and Celyn had more conversation.
All the necessary wrangling with townsfolk here done, we proceeded to Fellburn to find that the skeleton war was well underway and the skeletons were definitely losing. The Duke and his forces had set up an excellent battle machine for destroying undead - a spell that if they crossed it would do immense damage to them and a means of driving them into the relevant area - and were well on their way to breaking the siege. A paladin on a flying mount was harrying the forces from above; Viepuck eventually recognized her as the person who had saved him from the orphan-murdering scheme. The party joined in as skirmishers because we spotted an area skeletons were leaking and figured plugging the leak was sensible.
After the battle the people with healing powers did our best to help with triage and saving as many of the wounded as possible. Viepuck went to the town to say who we were to the authorities there. A powerful cleric of the Night Queen, who had been responsible for the effective trap zone, greeted the party, recognizing we've been part of this fight more than today, and blessed us all appropriately.
The party managed to locate the very busy flying paladin in and around collecting information at the Duke's encampment. Robin made introductions of the party, commenting that it was good to find other people actually doing things productively because things have been rather a lot. Viepuck stammered through thanking her for saving him from the orphan-sacrificing ring; she did not put two and two together until he explained that he was one of the few survivors of said event. She spoke to him about the other adventurers who had helped defeat the evil wizard in question, so that he could add them to his appropriate religious remembrances.
Finally we got into the audience with the Duke, who had some business to clear up regarding the governance of the town he just de-sieged, whose previous ruler died in the attack in part because his son was a coward. Son was deposed in favor of daughter. The various bits of army have been sent back to their proper places with orders to protect the people - the Duke is pissed off about various army orders sending troops willy-nilly places - but the Duke himself has to scramble and get to the capital, where he was summoned, before his absence is deemed treasonous.
The party is introduced. Celyn makes sure he is aware there is a pattern of the army being summoned places right before attacks hit there, which he looks quite sharp about but does not comment on explicitly. Celyn also attempts to bless him - invoking multiple domains of his god - and is left with a feeling he later explains as "trying to keep a candle going in a lantern with no glass, in a windstorm", which he explains to the Duke at the time as the danger being too great for his capacity, please take this warning as another blessing. After this effort he is wiltingly exhausted, and Viepuck is more explicit about concerns.
After the audience, the party drifts out to the Oracle of Hope, a strange pilgrimage site which sits atop the hill the Duke was using as his command center. There are pilgrims coming out from the town, and everyone has a chance to sit and recover and basically peoplewatch for a bit, up until Celyn spots someone he recognizes and can't figure out why she's there. Viepuck catches that he's muttering about the theatre troupe he used to work with, and he - after taking Robin's hand - explains that he and the lady in question have a complicated history, but he wants to know that his friends in the theatre are okay so he'll flag her down. She reacts to seeing him with shock and demands to know what he's mixed up in.
Of all the questions that are fundamentally unanswerable that's pretty high on the list? But the Players are well and the woman wants to talk to Celyn in particular, so he pries himself up and gets a message from one of the fey of his homeland delivered by a particularly unreliable messenger. He sends her off with his blessing, reassurances, and messages for his friends, despite being visibly exasperated by her foolishness around fairies. He has a cryptic message to chew on now.
Then we had play today:
We did seek out the paladin afterwards to tell her that we were worried about the danger of the situation. She made clear she was going back with the Duke because she had worries, but basically her personal opsec meant she wasn't going to explain her thirteenth level plans to a fifth level party she'd just met. Which was reasonable enough, just we Have A Concern.
After all the chaos settles out, the party hits the road and heads back towards our base of operations in Cleenseau.
Then of course we got the band back together by promptly reuniting with our missing lunatic, who we encountered on the road. He and some other adventurers had been clearing out undead dregs. Several of those adventurers were going to head north in order to figure out what had happened to their friends; one remained, because she was concerned about the fey-realm portal we had previously discovered. So a bunch of them went one way, and she went to keep watch over the portal and see if there was a pattern to it doing anything, and we all went to figure out what nonsense had happened in our absence.
Mostly there was a lot of petty administrative bullshit to work on to start with, which is primarily Robin's problem, with a side of being Viepuck's problem as Robin's squire, social secretary, and too-many-people filter. Celyn checked in on the local Wyrdling temple in our secondary base of operations then tried to be helpful with administrative nonsense.
As we were dealing with petty grievances and generalized nonsense, we started getting news from the capital. None of which was great! Because yes, sure, a tax levy to deal with this whole situation is reasonable, but the part where the scrambled army orders is being blamed on the people who were trying to follow them not so much, and definitely blaming the Duke for how things were handled in his demesne when he only managed to deal with the problem basically by mutiny because he was being sabotaged every which way was not on. Also the undead rising problem was blamed on some necromancers who had infiltrated the Night Queen temple, several senior priests had been put to death, and several were wanted for question - particularly including the flying paladin and the cleric who had set up the 'destroys all the undead' thing. We are cross. We send a letter to our ally there, who had been called away because apparently they were reviewing her claim to her title because reasons.
The whole thing appears to be set up to neutralize anyone who has been effective about the problems. The party is (at least currently) outside of the relevant hierarchies which means the problem in the court - we theorize some powerful warlock of the Gloomshaper, an enemy of the fey queen of Tyrwingha, where Celyn and Robin are from, who has claimed this area, apparently - cannot use that sort of order-giving to mess with us. Messing with us will have to be more direct.
We start setting up counter-rumors talking about the Duke's heroism and so on with Izgil puttering around going "Hmmm, but this doesn't make sense" about the particularly not-sensey bits.
We have also heard news from the western part of the area - the roads aren't so great that way - about other undead attacks and stupid army orders and how that's being dealt with. Eventually Viepuck sends his (fast swimming speed) eldritch octopus upriver to investigate what happened there.
The rumors about the necromancers came with the warning that apparently the ritual they did was supposed to raise the dead every new moon, so we spent the week or so remaining before that training our local troops to deal with magical combat situations, monsters, and the like, using illusions and no-damage magic. It seemed the thing to do. Izgil talked to his dwarven friends who were working on siege engines - and who really would rather be working on telescopes - about finding a compromise position and working on constructing solar mirror weapons ala Greek ship-destroyers.
As we were working on that, scouts reported a rag-tag band of Sembaran scouts coming up to the bridge over the river, so we went out to meet them after hastily constructing a banner for Robin to display. They turned out to be from the detachment of the army that had been sent away from Fellburn before the skeleton siege turned up, who had been sent wild-goose-chasing into the badlands and had encountered a series of unfortunate events. After Izgil surreptitiously checked them to see if there were signs of magical effects or other issues, their scout approached him to ask what he was doing; the resulting conversation led to him saying he thought they had been followed by some weird invisible singing creature, to which the party collectively went, "yeah, hostile fey action, we've been waiting for more of that".
The scout: Fey? But we weren't in Tyrwingha.
Celyn: [exasperated sigh, eyes rolled heavenward]
(Apparently the only thing that reliably gets Celyn grumpy is people failing fairy 101. But he is at this point a sort of slowly simmering kettle of perpetual low-grade exasperation about that.)
(Well, that and the eel. That made him mad. In most senses of the word, really.)
Anyway we reassured the scout that he wasn't crazy, it was the world doing so, and if he was not-seeing things like that again he should please tell us. Also would he please help train our forces in not-seeing things like that?
Then we discussed the need to add to Robin's Instructions for Undead Uprising Prevention an appendix of Celyn's Hostile Fairy Management Advice, at which Celyn was vocally frustrated until Robin got him to calm down and stop being grumpy about the people who didn't grow up with this stuff.
Viepuck's familiar reported in that the town it was sent to investigate tasted sad and angry and chaotic and human, and after determining we couldn't get it to give a message reliably, we tried for an unreliable message. unfortunately the problem with a six-month-old eldritch octopus is it's not great at a lot of things, so for example when Viepuck tried o talk to it about Ida, our local ally, it reported there were six to ten Idas there! They have the same vibe, you see! Viepuck tells it to tell one of the other Idas to write to Ida, and to do it as a dog so it wouldn't scare people, and got back a sense of cheerful satisfaction at a job well done, so ... okay!
As morale-based preparation for the possible undead uprising, Robin organizes a religious rally, basically, to provide spiritual bolstering to the local people. Celyn offers to help; Robin asks him to offer a blessing, Celyn meeps a bit in the "you are a much better speaker than I am" way; Robin assures him that people respect him too, they appreciate the Wyrdling's blessings, you can do it.
(Stats-based perspective here: Robin charisma 16 and actual skill at public speaking; Celyn charisma 12, no relevant skills, gives impression ranging from 'daft' to 'possibly mad but probably not dangerous' most of the time. Both common impressions of Celyn are incorrect in wildly different directions.)
Robin delivers his speech on the virtues of charity and mutual support; Celyn backs that up with a bit about finding hope in each other. Robin inducts Odo into his knightly order. Izgil lights up the event with magical moonlight just to nail the theatre of it all. After extensive celebration and generalized bonhomie, there is some sleep, until the alarms go off at 4am about invading undead. One, a skeletal force consisting of a bunch of orc skeletons led by an ogre skeleton that seem familiar to us, and two, some zombies staggering out of the local haunted forest. Overall, a bit dregs-y but still a problem to deal with, especially since the village next to the forest is largely unprotected.
We split the party: Viepuck and Izgil take some cavalry to go harry the skeletons with the goal of bringing them in range of the town wall where the townsfolk can contribute to their defeat (and to test the catapults), while Robin and Celyn take the infantry and a small contingent of light cav to take out the zombies. Both enemy forces are eliminated; the only fatality on the part of the living is one guy's horse. Rinault the acting lord who really wants to be In On The Action got to beat up a zombie and is talking himself up as a hero (Celyn actually finished it off and is letting him have his win).
So now we have dealt with that, have a month clear before we are worried about it potentially happening again, and are working on our plans to go figure out where the hell the baroness is, who is supposed to be in charge here, and who has not sent any word anywhere since she was installed and who may be hiding in the hills which are, currently, reputed to have unsolved zombies. (This is where our allies went to investigate.) One of our allies is keeping an eye on the fey portal that we discovered and is not happy about its apparent behaviors.
Aaand... our checkins with local villages do not turn up any undead attacks but do turn up the tax collector. So we go to figure out what's up with that. There are protocols for this.
It turns out the tax collector is not following the protocols. (There is a set amount he is supposed to collect, and he's trying to get more than that; there are set people and procedures for this, and he's basically trying to extort cash from randos on the road. Randos on the road include the party.)
It also turns out that the tax collector is someone Viepuck recognizes ... from the whole orphan-murdering ring thing. Viepuck, who has a thing that lets him do some telepathic communication, informs the party, "He's evil!" each in turn, just before the guy starts trying to do a shakedown on the group, starting with Robin.
Robin is unimpressed by evil.
The tax collector is aggravated that Robin is not impressed with him. We all have a bad attitude at him. Viepuck settles back to read his mind while we are uncooperative.
Robin gets to be fabulous:
Tax collector: Are you resident here?
Robin, coldly: I am Sir Robin of the Order of the Charitable Wanderer I am not resident anywhere.
Tax collector: But surely you wish to contribute to the common defense?
Robin, glancing indicatively at his mud-coated armour from the fight against the zombies: I. Contribute. Regularly.
Celyn asked what news of the baroness. We haven't heard anything, after all. Izgil chimes in with a, "For months." The tax collector continues to try to get us to cough up some cash right up until Viepuck suddenly comes out with local property law about standard procedures for tax collection in this regard and makes clear that he's aware the guy is squeezing for more he should and keeping half.
The guy flinches minutely - Celyn spots it - and proceeds to tell Viepuck he's nuts. Viepuck meanwhile has decided to call out the guy for his accomplice status in the whole orphan-murdering ring thing and adds fraud and banditry to it. Celyn adds a, "Do you really think you can lie to the Wyrdling?" but the guy is running.
Robin teleports in front of him.
The guy dodges around Robin.
Celyn teleports in front of him and lacking a clever one-liner or any actual intimidation skill says "Boo." This does not work, but Celyn can in fact do this all day, more or less, and plans to.
Robin manages to grab the guy's horse's bridle. Viepuck puts some people to sleep. Two of the strongbox guards make a break for it. One of the other ones starts to chase them. Chaos continues and is only enhanced by the moment when - to the startlement of every human present - Robin suddenly doubles in size, which makes it a lot easier to control the horse, for sure. (Every human present because it was Izgil who cast it and he is not human.)
Robin has this perpetual problem that the rest of the party keeps making his reputation grow but this is perhaps more literal than average.
In any case, we apprehend the apparent crooks, get the help of the honest guards, and head back to Cleenseau to figure out what the fuck to do with them. Which, after a trial, turns out to be 'execute the ringleader and his buddy, get the other two bandits who weren't in on it and one of whom turned state's evidence if only under the influence of magic to join the local army, and return the money to the lord of Beury who is confused until we explain that we want to make sure he has cash for the legitimate tax collector'.
Now we are off to figure out wtf is up with the baroness.
After we broke up we got (in email) a missive from the town we'd sent the familiar to, in which a local captain reported that a purple octopus popped out of the fireplace, covered his secretary in ink, scrawled 'IDA CLEENSEAU NEWS NOW' on the desk, turned into a dog, licked his hand, and loped out with tail-wagging cheerfulness.
So now we know what the familiar thinks of as a job well done.
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"Unfortunately the problem with a six-month-old eldritch octopus is it's not great at a lot of things" completely cracks me up.
Also, I continue to sideeye Rinault, but I am sure not as much as the party is.
And the actual context for Robin's wonderful line makes it even better.
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The eldritch octopus is a great source of hilarity, really.
The face Robin made when Celyn explained to the Duke that Robin was basically all of Rinault's good sense. (That being basically half the reason Robin was made acting captain of the town guard but also, argh. We put Rinault in our section so that we could keep an eye on him.)
It was so good, that exchange. So good. Dan's said he isn't always good at the snappy exchanges but that was so good.
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Gotta say I like the purple eldritch octopus.
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