Math: AAAAH, it's incredible.

Ash repressed his homicidal urges, his sociopathic urges, his psychopathic urges, his violent urges, his urges to jump, and, likely most importantly, his urges to stab.

Ash forced a grin "hey meyn, we'll give you a hunnerd gold to let us go now, yeah?"

The Goblin guards looked at each other and discussed it amongst themselves.

"I don' know man, if dey foun' out dey'd totally keel us both..."
"Ya maeyn, but imagin' wha' we coul' buy witdat!"

Ash cut to the chase, and silently promised his spear he'd stab something later extra hard.  "Look boys, we inna hurry okay?  Hows about two hunnerd gold but you gotta take it or LEAVE IT." he finished, emphasizing that he was holding a large spear and that, perhaps, the bribe was the way to go for the two gentlemen.

"Sheet meyn!  Das' like seventy five gold for each of us eh?"
"Holy co' really meyn?"
The Goblin smiled and looked back at ash with a sly grin "Oh yeah meyn, I'm real good at math."
"Sheet okay meyn, das a good deal."

Ash smiled knowingly at the entrepreneurial Goblin, and handed the one Goblin all 200 coins.  Likely he would split the "seventy five" coins into 17 groups of three for easy counting for his less intelligent counterpart.

"Alrigh' holmes, but remember, we didn' see nothin', but neither did you, comprende?  Dunno how you missed us Goblins, but you did.  Righ?"

Ash smiled.  "Righ' on meyn.  Go spend it all in one place ;-)"

The group continued walking, and noted that the ground itself was shuddering from the renovations.  No doubt the Delvers were hard at work.

Raelin frowned.  "They're making tunnels."

Ash nodded.  "Later, Raelin."

Raelin nodded.  "Can't be good."

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Jump... and... stab?

The group continued its way, doing its best to keep their distance, but not look like they were keeping their distance (eg walk casual).  What met their eyes was actually rather awe inspiring.  It really showed what stupid people in large groups could really accomplish with a little bit of direction.  The stronghold, which had already been impressive, now stood considerably larger than before (and the group had only last seen it less than 5 months ago) and, there were clearly additions on a very large scale being constructed out of wood and stone.  Most of the Goblins appeared hard at work, though, there were still sentries.

"...so I seys to t'human, I seys 'La-hook buh-dee' in der laamo languaage righ?"
"Oh meyn, I lo' it when y'do da acceeent"
"I no rhi?  An I seys, 'I dohn't care how bihg you ahre, I'm still gonna out-duh-rink your sorry ass!' "
"No waaay, you sai' dat mayn?"
"For reals, and then this big ol' Dwarf come up, an' it turs out dey friends, ri?"
"Oh sheet, you can't ou'drink a Dwarf hombre!"
"Dat's wh'you tink, doh!  Das when da storee gess better..."
"Oh sheet meyn, der's some ungoblins comin'!"

"Uh oh..." they collectively uh oh-ed, as the two Goblin sentries, who were riding upon some rather large wolves, approached in a rather aggressive manner.

"Heeeey guuys!" Ash smiled, practicing his Goblin, and making a nice warm gesture.

"Heeey, iss da Kobold-killahs eh?" came the reply of the Goblin sentries.

"Yeeeh meyn, we's jus' headin' through yeah?"

"Awww man, why don' you com' 'ang outwichus a while eh?"

"Naaaw, dudes, we gotta keep on mooovin'"

The Goblins looked at each other and sighed.

"No man.  We insist." they said.  "We gotta detain you fo' a while."

"Wha?  Why meyn?"

"Sorree, we're on high alert, we's got orders to detain jus' about everyone."

The group paused and looked at their apparent new figurehead for a solution.

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Basically, its very bad.

Eventually, the party agreed that hiding was a good plan, based on the sound of the rumbling indicating a large offensive force, or, at the very least, a freakin' huge something.

The group began deciding on who best to hold (and use) the wand of greater illusion they'd found earlier.

"Tribby have high concentration!" she claimed to the group.
Ash sighed, "that's... constitution."
"...oh."

DM's Note:  (We'll pretend that was great roleplaying.)

The group decided to give the wand to Raelin, who had excellent concentration (but, for the record, low constitution), and he crafted an illusionary forest around them, off the path - the theory being that this would look like any other forest, and would give whatever-it-was-that-was-coming no reason to investigate it.

As a precaution, they blindfolded the duckephant.

DM's note: I was very tempted on pointing out the vastness of player knowledge they were using when they decided to this - as they had never even once considered blindfolding one of their party before a previous battle, but, I thought to myself - "you might want to blindfold the duckephant, y'know, like you did the last time you came across a chariot, or a scorpion", might prove to be funny in the future.

The terrifying thing approached.  The group saw as a cohesive unit for the first time, exactly what Thaco and Manbearpig had done their best to describe.

T'was a monstrous creation.  A gigantic undead scorpion, fused to the hips of a gigantic undead humanoid, with multiple sets of arms.  The skeleton itself seemed to be permanently on fire.  And, while terrifying, the fact that he had a rather large, wooden sign that said "put dragon head here" on the scorpion's tail was... out of place.

Beside him on all sides were huge, rumbling chariots that seemed equipped with a variety of advanced weaponry, and many, many goblins who were operating the foul smelling machines.  Black smoke billowed out from their tops like an angry, slumbering dragon's fog.

Surrounding them were hundreds and hundreds of goblins, and hobgoblins; all of which, appeared to be searching for something.

The huge skeleton, screamed in its terrifying voice "FIND IT!"

Every single one of our band of heroes with exception of Ash  and Raelin, peed themselves and ran.

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Sadly, there probably is a Guinness record.

"And I'm here, watching the slave trade between the Goblins (that's us) and the Ogres, and its my job to make sure nothing goes wrong because sometimes Ogres are untrustworthy (not that we aren't) and if anyone finds out that I'm not watching the action and as a result something bad happens it'll be my ass on the line and that's why I can't talk to you right now so please don't stab me!"  The Goblin snapped at Ash without the aid of punctuation.

Ash grunted.  "Okay.  You aren't worth any XP anyway." Still, a gathering of goblins and Ogres did promise to be a battle more up his alley...  He turned to tell Tribby the contents of the conversation and saw her reach her personal best.

"23 inches!" She smiled.

Ash sighed.  "C'mon Trib.  We're gonna go save some slaves and hunt some Ogres."

Tribby beamed and wiped her latest challenge on her tunic so that it would dry into a nice trophy.

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The Gentler Side of Ash

Tribby and Ash pushed through the dense forest, in search of the deadly silence, and found a goblin up in a tree in a makeshift fort, with a strange looking device, which he was currently looking into rather intently.

"Uh..." Tribby said, unsure if she should smash, or ask the fellow what he was up to.

Ash put his hand on her shoulder and shook his head.  As she didn't speak Goblin, her attempting anything would only end in violence; and, for once, Ash was wanting to ask questions and then shoot.

"Hey." Ash heyed.

"What!?" The Goblin whatted.

Ash paused, and then continued "What are you doing?"

The Goblin tore his eye away from his device "Piss off!  I'm busy!"

Tribby, not understanding any of the conversation, entertained herself by seeing how long of an intact booger she could get out of her nose.

Ash did his best to be diplomatic.  "If you don't tell me what's going on, I'm going to stab you in the face."

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Yadda yadda yadda

Using the King as a hostage, the heroes set it upon themselves to free the slaves, concubines, and animals.  Jay El initiated a "handful to each" of the slaves program, where they distributed the hundreds of thousands of copper coins amongst the slaves.

Then, and, it being late clearly effecting both the party and the DM's logic systems... they decided to stay there a few months and make cool stuff.

At some point, urgency and a time limit had been mentioned, in relation to the upcoming end of the world... but, when else would they have the chance to make plate mail for a Duckephant?

They took a cheetah, monkey and a Duckephant, made Armor for Ash, the Duckephant, and Ash's horse; Tribby had the King's crown crafted into a bracelet for her, and, in general, they milked the Kobold dungeon for everything it had.

Little details like sleeping and co-existing and food management were generally glossed over, and Jay El managed not to have any pressing nightmares or plot devices thrown at him during the course of these many months and, in general, the party got away with a lot.

Eventually, they took their 8000 (finally) freed slaves out, went a bit West of the former Roe, and started the slaves off on building the town of Salsa.

At this point, they took the Goblin girl and 50 armed guards to the Goblin city, reunited her with her family, traded a bit of their jewels for gold, sold a bunch of morning stars, and let the Goblins know that they'd pretty much wiped out the Kobold threat.

And now, they were off to the Elf City!

XP

Manbearpig

 Alignment Bonuses +200

 Killing Stuff +600

+300

 Roleplaying +700

 Traps +50

 Prison Break +400

SUB TOTAL 2250

Ash 

 Alignment Bonuses +200

 Killing Stuff +1800

 Roleplaying +700

 Secret Word Solve +50

 Neat Mid Air Spiderman Flip +50

 Milking the armor/treasure/slaves situation for everything it was worth +50

SUB TOTAL 2850

Tribby

 Alignment Bonuses +200

 Killing Stuff +1800

 Roleplaying +700

 Duckephant domestication logic +50

SUB TOTAL 2750

Jay El

 Alignment Bonuses +500

+10% Good

 Killing Stuff +1800

 Roleplaying +700

 Cool use of wind-wall +50

SUB TOTAL 3050

All

 Freed 8000 slaves +2000

 Rescued The Faries +800

 Created Salsa +1200

 Defeated Kobold Dung. +2000

SUB TOTAL 6000

Totals

 Jay El 9050  LEVEL UP! LEVEL UP!

 Ash 8850 LEVEL UP!

 Tribby 8750 LEVEL UP!

 Manbearpig 8250 LEVEL UP! LEVEL UP!

Jay El's first taste of power

"Are you good biggies, or bad biggies?" Came the Fairy's reply.

"Hm...  Good biggies." Manbearpig replied.

The fairy narrowed his clearly discerning eyes at the pigmanbear.  He'd been killing goblins... which sometimes hurt the Fairies... but then, Goblins sometimes hurt the Kobolds, who hurt the fairies, which made them less bad, but then still not friends, and then there was the Kobolds who sometimes hurt the Goblins who sometimes hurt the fairies...

"We're nice." He extrapolated.  Thankful that their kobold companion had fled during the fight - as it miiiight have been awkward having him with them.

"Okies, we'll help." The Fairy decided.  And, with that, it went off with its pals and sang a merry tune.

Carnage spewed all around as goblinic death ran rampant throughout the area.  Even Shitanya was at a loss for swearing, and simply lost herself to the never ending chaotic clawing carnage.  (although she did briefly decide to attempt to eat one of the Fairies, but, thankfully, nobody heard her over all the cuffufal)

[boy I miss my spell checker... who removes functionality in a blog so crucial as a spell checker?]

Just when it appeared that the fairies might simply be singing for fun, the Goblins all fell asleep in a large cone of sleepytime.

The fairies then flew to another section of Goblin, and began humming at them.

Carnage carnage carnage, and the party began making their way to the slumbering section of goblins, dragging the holey Tribby with them.

After the second patch of goblins succumed to their collective sleep spell, the smarter of the three fairies again approached Manbearpig.

"Timey we go, now, yes?" the fairy attempted.

Jay El trundled up, covered in the blood of the unlucky.  "hey, I'm AWESOME!" he said, convincingly.

"You are a gooood biggie!" Came the fairy's response; then, upon seeing Ash, asked him the same question of being a good biggie or a bad biggie.

"I fucking love killing shit!" came his reply.

The fairy did its best not to judge, and assumed that, if he was hanging out with someone as awesome as Jay El, he couldn't be all bad.

Jay El convinced the pretty little thing that they just need to pillage the dead before they left for their peaceful village.  (which pretty much used up the last of his entropic magesty) and, the party collected 53 morning stars, 15 leather armors (the majority of the damage that had been done that day was so extensive that, the majority of armors were decimated beyond recognition), 8 shields (for the same reasons) and 20 gold, 100 silver, and 749 copper pieces.

They then headed for the village of the fairies.
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Ants, Allegories, Alligators & Ass whuppin'

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Session 4: Well crap. Someone relocated the DM's map & plotline thread. Looks like we're wingin' it!

Session 4: Well crap. Someone relocated the DM's map & plotline thread. Looks like we're wingin' it!


Abatu visits Jay El in his sleep

Abatu: "my domain is that of entropy, and I am an eternal observer of that which is good and decent in this world.

You should know that It is through my efforts that you are alive and well at all.

Though currently, due to the entropic manipulation this has required in order to coincidently get all of you together in the same place at the same time with the somewhat improbable items that were in your posession, I am something of an impotent gardian angel, for the moment.

Gazing upon the strong love you have for your daughter is as rejuvinating for me as water is for you, and, it is my hope that I will be able to help you again soon, sustained by nothing else.

It is very important to me to keep both you, and your daughter alive and well.

You have entwined destinys, and a great potential for great goodness.

Trust your companions, for they will both keep you safe, and be a moral compass for you in the upcoming darkness that you will need all of our help to overcome.

You must awaken. They mean you harm. I wish we had more time.

I have dire news for you. Though I cannot say which, a companion of yours will be taken this night. They will be tortured, and mentally scarred to a point that they will be mentally unrecognizable to you. In my current state, I am unable to help you, weak as I am.


I wish you luck, though this is merely a useless parting statement rather than the actual blessing I would normally be able to provide."

Jay El pleads with Abatu and seeks some way to solve this crisis. To which... there is but one.

To perminantly sacrifice a loving memory of his daughter, forever. The refined essence of this memory being far more potent than any single observation.


"...I'll do it." Came Jay El's anguished reply, as the memory was painlessly ripped from him. He simply never had this experience. As a result, his soul was just a titch darker, his life, a little less meaningful, and his character, slightly more tarnished from his life's hazards.

Abatu glowed, drinking in the refined happiness & joy... and then, Jay El is awakened by the sounds of some rather upset Goblins.
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