Xylophone Ribs

Tribby smashed and cleaved through the ribs of multiple skeletons, making a pleasant sequence of notes upon their bodies with her club as they were smashed asunder.  Ash yelped in surprise as 4 more of the bone creatures appeared around the room, and an invisible creature stabbed him between his own, considerably less musical ribs.  "They can go invisible!" he yelled, lashing out violently towards the supposed location of his attacker.

Med launched another scorching ray, dodging the retaliatory hail of arrows and stones.  Jay El looked to his right and noted that one of the bone demons which had just appeared was right next to him.  "oh." he said, as he was stabbed in the shoulder.

Manbearpig aimed his bow and snapped his bowstring again.  "fiddlesticks." he murmured.

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Seriously, sometimes those things can really cut your hand.

Manbearpig squinted and aimed his wicked-awesome bow at the target, using one of Ash's written down golden arrows.

He would break this run of bad luck, bad shots, broken bow strings, accidentally injured teammates and misfires.  He would.

Manbearpig became one with the bow, and, not unlike Luke Skywalker upon firing his photon torpeedos into the Death Star's really-should-have-had-a-grate-on-it hole, he closed his eyes, and prayed.  The arrow loosed itself, and became one with the bullseye.

"Holy Toledo!" Jay El quipped, breaking Manbearpig's trance, and informing him that he had, for the first time, made the shot.

In fact, not only did he make the shot, but, he'd made it right smack in the middle.

"I...  I did it?" Manbearpig gasped, agog.  "I DID IT!  I DIDN'T EVEN CUT MY HAND WITH THE FLETCHINGS!"

12 potions of cure light wounds popped out of the wall, and the room beyond the red line (which, for the record, he'd been standing behind like a good little druid) was engulfed in cold vapor.  "Good thing none of us were in there!" he smiled, picking up the potions, reloading, and firing again.

After that moment, it was as if a curse had finally been lifted on the druid.

"Bullseye!  Bullseye!  Bullseye!" He smiled, as more prizes, namely, 15 potions of endure elements, a wand of featherfall, and a mysterious "salve of the force" were deposited into the prizes section.

"Man!  I wish I'd had some golden arrows of my own to shoot.  I'll bet there was some other really neat prizes to be won!"

The universe glared at the pigman, accusingly.

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Inventory. Write 'er down, folks.

"So... the door actually says boss on it." Ash sighed, rolling his eyes.

Jay El smiled.  "Well, she's like, what, 5, mentally?"

"Regardless, I mock this as a concept."

"Moving forward..." Raelin prompted, clearly wishing to megahaduken something else.

The group entered the room, and saw a long hallway with a target at the end.  In front of them, was a red line.

"We should shoot that target." Ash said, announcing what, at least one would hope, the entire group was thinking.  "Does anyone have any golden arrows left?"

Everyone murmured about meaning to put it into their inventory at some point, but having completely forgotten, had, at some point, apparently, lost their arrows.

Ash sighed.  "Well, I still have the 4 that I picked up, earlier."

Manbearpig looked despondently down in the general region of his crotch.  He'd always had a hard time holding on to material goods.

Ash tossed the golden arrows to Manbearpig who, sadly, was the best shot of the group.

Manbearpig looked down at the arrows, back up at Ash, back down at the bow, back up at Ash, over to Raelin, back at the ENTIRE WORLD AND ALL ITS OCCUPANTS ENCOMPASSED INTO A SINGLE POINT IN SPACE (otherwise known as the DM) and, eventually, took the shot.

"Dang." he sighed.

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Jay El loses his jewels.

Thanks to the mental connection the entire party was sharing, everyone was privy to the innermost thoughts of the party, weather they wanted to be, or not.

"I think that I'm a fucking cheetah!"
"Rat hands!"
"Monkey hands!"
"Can I make a wish on your hands?"
"I'll make a wish for you!  (oh good, middle fingers yay for opposable thumbs!)"
"Everyone shut up!  We're all inside our animals"
"I'm a horse.  (do doo do d-doo)"
"Was anyone awake when this happened?"
"I was.  World got shimmery.  Nobody around, nuthin'"
"Jewel-less!  I feel so separated from my divinity!"
"I could totally smash that door!  I'm freaking HUGE!"
"Hold the hell on!"

The Cheetah (Ash) opened the door.  "Sheesh.  You get trapped in an animal's body and you get all panicky."

Ash paused and looked at some of the smaller animals in the party.  This Cheetah hadn't eaten in a while.

"We should get moving." he muttered, noting that the rest of the party was well aware of his hunger pangs, and hoped that they understood the severity of his request.

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What we have here...

Everyone stopped.  They too, heard, and indeed, even began to feel, the ominous rumbling.

Manbearpig thought silently to himself that it could be some kind of beast - perhaps a worm based on the steadiness of the rumbling.  Raelin was more inclined to think that it was some form of huge chariot.  Tribby came to the conclusion that it was likely not-tummy.

"Thaco." Tribby announced, reminding everyone that she had a familiar, "Go up and look."  Thaco blinked, looked at Tribby, and took off to the skies.

What Thaco saw was a little more that she(?) was able to communicate fully, but her birdbrain did its best.  "Burning... Death... Large... Wood." she(?) described, circling and then returning.  "Coming closer!"

Tribby relayed the bird's thoughts to the group.

"Maybe the forest is on fire?" Jay El put fourth.

Manbearpig thought that this was unlikely, as the cadence of the rumbling lacked the cadence of stampeding animals - however, he felt that it was best for Jay El to learn these things on his own.

Still, he silently reasoned to himself, it would probably be a good idea for the group to find out what it was.

Ash looked pointedly at Manbearpig "Go turn into a bird and give us better recon than Tribby's retarded bird."

Manbearpig nodded and did so.

Below him was a myriad of horrors, vast and terrifying.  Chief among the terrors was the 50 foot across undead scorpion, who appeared to have a giant, glistening skeleton (possibly metallic?) atop it, with multiple arms, and... it was on fire (and seemed to be okay with that).  Beyond that, there were huge...  Manbearpig struggled with what to call them, and ended up with wooden chariots the size of houses, with many, many goblins atop them.  Indeed, surrounding the group of mobile barracks and the fiery undead doom, there were hundreds and hundreds of goblins, and, what appeared to be hobgoblins as well.

Manbearpig returned to the group, and cleared his throat.

"I've had a big realization."

The group looked at Manbearpig expectantly.

"Huge scorpion, with a huge skeleton on top of it."

They looked at him some more.

"Its very bad."

He paused for effect, and, noting that they seemed to want a more elaborite description of everything, added "its very evil."

Ash looked at him, and sighed "What about the wood?"

"There's..." he paused "...a big carriage with many goblins on it."

Raelin decided to get some dialog in "Manbearpig, would you suggest we fight it?"

Jay El, who had been doing his best to listen to the cornucopia of vibrant descriptions coming from the twin recon team, added his own two bits "There's a scorpion?"

Manbearpig looked at him and squinted.

"How big of a scorpion?  Is the skeleton riding it?" Ash prompted

"THERE'S A SKELETON!?" Jay El squeaked

Manbearpig blinked

"What is it?" Med asked

"Should we light it on fire?" Raelin asked

Manbearpig waited for the questions to subside.  "...it's... already on fire."

"WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT!?  WHAT'S ON FIRE!?" Jay El finished, totally exasperated.

Ash grunted, "How would you suggest we fight it?"

Raelin put in his two coppers "psh, how about get the hell out of the way and continue along our way?  How's that sound as a battle strategy?"

"What?  It's only one friggen' scorpion and a skeleton who is already on fire!  That's something Med could kill by herself!"
"No, there was wood!"
"ooOooh WOOoOOD, I'm sooOoo scared!"
"There were some goblins, too!"
"Oh yeah, because we've never been able to kill Goblins before."
"on a carrage!"
"so!?"
"A big carriage, he said a BIG carriage!"
"with little goblins!"

"THERE'S GOBLINS!?"

(this went on for a bit, and eventually...)

"but... but...my player knowledge knows that what we're talking about is considerably more terrifying than what Manbearpig told us about!"
"too bad!  I'm fearless anyway, so I'm still going to say we fight it!"
"Fine then, you fight it!  I say we stick with Raelin's plan of hiding!"

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Brilliant.

Tribby snapped out of her daze, almost as if there was an exterior entity who had been controlling her the majority of the time, but that entity had gone out for sushi and left the Ogre more mindless than usual for a period of time.

Regardless, she was back.

"Where... Trib...by...   TRIBBY GOING BACK TO ROCK-PLACE!" She announced.  Gluestick, who had been licking her face with a worried look upon... her(?) face (is gluestick a guy or a girl?) nodded in agreement, and accompanied her back to the quarry.

Manbearpig took a deep breath and prepared to do more talking.  "They already found our duckephant." he said.  Jay El, who was used to keeping his ears piqued for the soft spoken druid, gave him some recognition and encouraged him to continue.

"They're taking care of it.  There's lots of Ogres." Manbearpig finished with a sigh of relief.

"Did you talk to Shibou?" Jay El prompted.

Manbearpig squinted at Jay El and shook his head no.  Jay El made the "elaborate" motion, and Manbearpig squinted anew.  "Can't talk when I'm a bird." he elaborated.

Tribby, who had just arrived, announced loudly "TRIBBY MISS SHIBOU!"

Ash decided to defend Manbearpig's apparent decision "What do you want to do, save the duckephant and get killed in the process?"

Jay El suddenly had a thought.  "Hey... I just remembered... remember Shitanya?  What ever happened to her?"

Without missing a beat at the apparently random segue, Ash voiced his most heartfelt opinions on the matter, bearing his soul of any and all feeling that he had on the subject "Meh." he replied, succinctly.  "So, do we want to leave then?  We could go kill the delver.   What do you guys think?"

Manbearpig sighed.  He really didn't want to speak again so soon.  He feared his vocal chords would likely suffer like a drunk girl at kareoke, but, he had to.  "I have a question." Manbearpig said.  "What are we doing?"

Jay El paused, and realized that Manbearpig had been asleep in his trance for some time now.  "Oh.  Well, we killed a bunch of innocent things."

Manbearpig nodded "I was there for that."

Jay El paused, considered, and then continued "Oh yeah.  Well, then we fought some Manticores."

Raelin piped up "Then we found a bunch of slaves, these idiots insisted on saving them, and then we killed a bunch of Ogres."

Manbearpig nodded.  Their update was detail ridden and accurate enough for him.

Jay El paused and then brought up a very good question.  "Hey.  How could we save the duckephant?"

Everybody paused.  It was a really good question which, somehow, they had all collectively overlooked.  Ash sighed, "We could cast a whisper spell on a bird and yell 'duckephant duckephant come to me!' or something along those lines."

Jay El paused "Yeah.  That might work."

Med paused.  "So... it isn't impossible?"

Ash grunted "No.  Seems pretty easy to me, actually."

"...well... good then."
"good."
"Great."
"Great?"
"Sure.  Great."
"okay."
"Okay."
"good."
"So..."

Everyone paused.

"Let's go do that, then."

Med nodded.  "I'm going to go sleep with the slaves."

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Actually, there are plenty of ways that one could...

Manbearpig soared in falcon form, looking at the Ogre city below.  How decimated Roe had become.  Once a teeming city of thousands, now... well, actually, it was still a teeming city of thousands.  It just... wasn't as sanitary or friendly.  He continued his perimeter of the city, and looked at one of the gates.  Shibou was there, at the gates, surrounded by 6 Ogres who seemed to be stripping her not unlike a carriage left in some of the slummier parts of towns he'd frequented in his day.  It seemed most of their gear had already been pilfered from her saddlebags, and they were now working on removing Shibou's armor itself.

Thankfully, Shibou seemed unharmed.  They even appeared to be feeding her.

"Well" Manbearpig silently reasoned to himself "Looks like Shibou is un-savable, but, at least she's being well taken care of."

Content with his observations, Manbearpig flew back to the quarry from which he'd left.

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What we have here...

Tribby ran and Manbearpig bounced while Gluestick galloped.  Tribby breathed as she ran "Tribby really would miss Shibou, Shibou is good friend."

Manbearpig nodded silently.  He too, had forged something of a bond with the beast.  He wondered silently to himself if Gluestick had ever felt any pangs of jealousy...

"Plus, Shibou has all our stuff!"

Manbearpig nodded silently.  It was true.  Much of their possessions had been put into Shibou's harnesses from time to time, and the beast's daily burden forgotten.  What must it be like, he wondered, to be such a beast, where size and strength were so ever-present that the weight of hundreds of pounds were meaningless?  He paused, and realized that many a bug would ask the same of Man...

"..." Manbearpig said, saving his voice for later.

Suddenly, Manbearpig had a thought.  He could turn into a bird and cover considerably more distance.  He did so.  Gluestick did the horse equivalent of shrugging, and continued galloping next to Tribby.

"Tribby likes eating Shibou's poo, too.  Tribby thinks its because Shibou is a vegetarian that her poo is better than... than..."  Tribby stopped.  Where had Manbearpig gone?  She stood still and stared into the trees.  Where had he gone?


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Procrastinated Dialog

Manbearpig, his abdominal muscles cramping from the strain of his previous exclamation, once again, went silent.  The contents and warnings of the dreams were likely unimportant anyway, he reasoned.

He looked over at Ash, who seemed to be talking to some slaves - some of which he recognized from Salsa.  "Rats." Manbearpig thought to himself "those guys just can't catch a break." and, as an afterthought "is Ash completely devoid of any and all body hair, and wearing a pink helm?"

"...and yeah, we were okay for about two hours after you left, and then these big friggin' tree things..."

"(treants)" Ash interrupted.

"...treants, right, they just started rounding us up.  They gave some of us to the Roe Ogres, and took others with them."

"To eat." Ash put in

"Probably, I... I never really thought... oh my god, my wife... my poor..."

"Anyway, then what happened?" Ash prompted.

"...I... well... I guess, (sniff) I guess after that, we've been working... we've been working for the Ogres, and then... well, they sold some of us to the Goblins...  (my god, my poor wife)"

"Go on." Ash pushed.

"right, right -sorry.  And, well, we've been making the Goblin's stronghold, and mining rocks for them ever since."

"What have the Goblins been purchasing from the Ogres, and what are they building?"

"Oh, they bought a delver today... I think they'd bought three or four before that, as well... as for what we've been building, its kind of like a new addition to their existing stronghold.  Making it bigger."

"Why?"

"I don't know.  Probably because there's so damn many of them, they probably just need the space."

"Why the delvers?"

"Probably to help with the renovations.  The majority of their stronghold is rock - delvers shape rock, right?"

One of the other slaves pointed his hand up like he had something to add.
"Go ahead" Ash pointed at him.

"They also have been trying to buy some frost worms."

"Why?"

"I don't know.  I don't actually know what they are.  Some kind of dragon, I'm guessing."

Ash nodded.  Interesting.

Manbearpig realized he was looking at the conversation like a lovesick teen looking at a sparkley vampire.  He wanted to have conversations, he wanted to have expository dialog.  He wanted to really connect with people...

Tribby ran up to Manbearpig.  "Manbearpig!  Duckephant run away, you come help find!"

Manbearpig nodded, and mounted gluestick, silently goading the mount in the direction Tribby was headed.  Silently wondering if it would be a good idea to share his dreams with the group, but discounting those as silly, silly thoughts.

DM's NOTE: Seriously?  "Aaauugh?"  That's your summary of the whole nightmarish vision?  "Aaaaugh?"

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Manbearpig Meditation IV

This Audio Really helps sell the scene

They burn through the bodies of those who dare attack them, and feast upon the men, women, and children alike in truly horrendous ways.  


"Something evil this way comes"


Dangling them from broken limbs and drinking from them like cups, crunching into them with gnarled teeth, sucking their guts out... kinda like jello shooters.

"Something evil this way comes"

"SOMETHING EVIL THIS WAY COMES"

"SOMETHING EVIL THIS WAY COMES!"

Manbearpig awoke in a cold sweat with a sense of dread, a sense of urgency, and an intense feeling of terror in his veins.  He noted he was tied to his faithful steed Gluestick, and Tribby was cheerfully walking by, dragging a dead Bugbear by its ankle.

Manbearpig paused, pontificated, perseverated, and eventually, found the exact druidic phrase with which to impart upon the party the wisdom that he had gained from his druidic trance.  

"uuuuuAaaaAAagh." he said, nearly pulling a groin muscle in an attempt to use an exclamation point.

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Manbearpig Meditation III

This Audio Really helps sell the scene

They seem insanely fast, very strong, durable, and seem to come in all shapes and sizes 


"Something evil this way comes"


From Ogre sized to Rodent sized, they continually are tearing the faces, limbs, and seemingly the very souls out of innocents again, and again, and again... and again, as you see horrific scene after horrific scene.


"Something evil this way comes"
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Manbearpig Meditation II

This Audio Really helps sell the scene

For what seems like days,  Manbearpig continued to be bombarded with horrific flashes of images... which seem impossible... which seem evil, which seem... disturbed.


Every time Manbearpig would think he was about to see a complete scene, it would be replaced anew with something equally as disturbing.


A demonic voice continues to repeat throughout the vision the simple phrase:
Something evil this way comes.


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Gnoll Flambe

The group readied themselves, but then, hesitated.  It wasn't like Gnolls to attack without the element of surprise.  And, while technically the group was currently surprised, it was going to take the Gnolls about a minute or so to get to the party.

"Something's wrong, here." Ash commented.  "Doesn't feel right."

Jay El nodded.  "What if they aren't attacking us?  What if they're..."

"Running?" came Raelin's interjection, as he began summoning a fireball.

"From what, though?" Jay El questioned, "There's nothing... on the..."

Raelin launched a fireball and obliterated the Gnolls.

Jay El paused, and looked up, and was unable to see too far due to the tree's canopy.  "...ground..."

Manbearpig followed Jay El's thought and glanced upwards.

Jay El breathed his prayers of flight and launched himself skyward so as to get a glimpse of what they might be up against.

There were six, flying, lion-like creatures covered in long, wicked-looking spines; their large, dragon-like wings were carrying them about 180 feet in the air in large, powerful flaps.

The Manticores looked at the sudden appearance of Jay El, who was only about 60 feet above the ground, and fired a volley of their spines at him.

Caught completely unprepared, Jay El looked in horror as the rain of spines approached him.  Manbearpig had told him a story once, when they were young, about such creatures, and how their spines could pierce through plate mail and even mythral like they were butter.

Jay El closed his eyes and flinched "ABATU!" he yelled.

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Manbearpig Meditation I

This Audio Really helps sell the scene

Manbearpig's meditation was... not going well.

"Something evil this way comes"




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We can't even stack wine skins on his face?

The night came and went with little in the way of distractions.  The Nykter tribe did fly overhead, screeching and screaming their protests, but, they failed to find the party hidden beneath the canopy of trees.

Jay El glanced at Manbearpig, who was still deep in his druidic trance.  He'd read somewhere that waking people up when they were trancing was really bad for them... or was that sleepwalking?  Either way, he seemed totally into it and Jay El figured it would be okay to move him, but, did so as gently as possible; ignoring Ash and Raelin's requests to both charcoal genitalia onto his face, as well as tie him to Shibou's nonexistent wang (The Duckephant being a female), and instead, tied him gently to Gluestick, who gave him a concerned neigh.

"I think he's okay, Gluestick." Jay El soothed the concerned companion.  "He's just been through a lot." he finished, smiling feebly.  Manbearpig had to be okay.  He just had to.



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Right now Med's thinking: Am I the only "good" good?

After travelling for a few miles, the group came to a halt.  "We should rest." Raelin mentioned.

"Really?" Ash quipped, "I feel fine."

"Tribby's ears hurt." she said, sadly.  The thousands upon thousands of Nykters were still surrounding them, screaming and pleading for them to return the Prism before it was too late.

Med looked at the group surrounding her, and was unsure of how to continue.  To leave them now, could be incredibly dangerous...  both the wild animals that came out at night, and the group's unpredictable reaction itself was more than enough to worry about.  To stay with them, however, seemed against everything she stood for.  She prayed for a sign, and for forgiveness.

While nothing immidiately happened, eventually the sun came up, which drove away the Nyktars.

Bacca wriggled underneath Manbearpig's cloak, which clearly wasn't thick enough to prevent the sun's rays from reaching him.  He offered the creature an apologetic smile, and said "Go.  Be safe.  I...  I'm sorry."

Bacca looked at him with his large, teary eyes and blinked.  "I...  I want my Mommy."

"I understand." Manbearpig smiled, "It's okay."

"But... but if I go, she won't be my Mommy anymore."

Manbearpig didn't understand at first, but then realized that the little one was probably coming to terms with the very likely fact that his parents would die soon without the Prism, or, perhaps they'd already died from his companions' actions.

"Well...  if you want to stay with me, you can.  I'll protect you."

The little Nykter smiled.  "Thanks Manbeawpig." and, with that, he flew out of the sunlight, and was lost in the sea of retreating Nykter.

"Bye lil' guy." Manbearpig smiled.  "good luck."

The 20, the 30, the 40...

There came an echoing cacophony of skrees as thousands upon thousands of Nyktar's let out their cries of protest all at once and came running towards the party.

Ash lunged forward, and grabbed the Prism from the Shaman.  Raelin lunged forward too, but wasn't quite as fast.  "Blast." he thought to himself "THAT'S going to come up later..."

The Shaman yelled "No!  You can't take it!  You know not what you do!" and summoned a huge snake in an attempt to retrieve the Prism.

Ash scoffed at the huge snake and stabbed it in both of its lungs.  In a desperate, gasping strike, the snake took one scraping bite out of Ash's leg on the way down.  He grunted, but felt little pain.

Raelin laughed.  "Actually Fuzzball, I know exactly what we're doing.  It's been mentioned to me already that your lazy tribe has been using the prism to survive all these years.  In the words of my Father, get a job and a haircut you bunch of hippies!" and with that, he launched a scorching ray at the druid, incinerating him instantly.

Jay El looked behind him, and saw the collection of two foot tall fuzzy creatures swarming towards them.  "Uh... we better get outta here guys!" he yelled, "cover your ears, I'm going to try something!" 

Manbearpig looked at his companions, and down at the terrified little Nykter still clutching Manbearpig's hand.  He looked back at Jay El, who was about to cast a spell, likely a sound based one.  He was loyal to his friend, but... this was wrong, and he knew it.  He looked back down at Bacca, who was crying, and grabbed him, shielded him with his body, and wrapped his arms around Bacca's ears, as well as his own.  "Hold on!" he whispered.

Jay El yelled his spell into the catacombs and created a huge, echoing burst of sound to erupt within the cave, driving the creatures back in pain.  Due to the echoing cavern, the spell bounced around and hit everyone multiple times, including Jay El and the party; though Manbearpig's charge, Bacca, took only a small amount of damage, due to Manbearpig's selfless shielding.

Something that Jay El didn't plan, but effectively tripled the effect of the spell, was that the sound traveled through the whisper spell Tribby had cast earlier -- effectively doubling the spell's effective range (and giving Tribby, and the Nykter in her general area quite the surprise)

The combination of the Nykter's sensitive ears, the range, the echoing cavern, the double-up from the whisper spell, and the fact that the Nykter's were about as deadly as a rabbit made this very, very effective.

The group of Nykters fell to the ground crying, and still more came, protesting and pleading with the heroes not to cause their extinction.

"Boys!  Whip out your stones!" Med yelled, referring to the sunstones.  The boys did so, causing painful shrieks from the already deafened Nykter.  Bacca let out a terrified cry, and huddled closer into Manbearpig's chest, who used his cloak to shield him.

Seeing no way to stop what was clearly turning into another Lawful Good Genocidal Cluster-Fuck, Manbearpig opted to get the hell out of there, and to do his best to at least save Bacca, who he felt responsible for.

Putting his hand in front of him, and creating a magical gust of wind, Manbearpig ran forward, his left hand outstretched in front of him casting the spell, his other clutching Bacca to his ribs.

Raelin knelt down and grabbed the remains of the Shaman.  A druid of that caliber might have some loot worth sorting through later.

Mind Control Amendment

"And I wike catching gophers"
"uh huh"
"cause dey're fuzzy"
"sure"
"but I don't eats dem like some do bekuz I only eats carrots and sumtimes bugs"
"really"
"because dey're weally fun to eat because dey wiggle and hewe we awe!" Bacca segued the way only a 4 year old can; pulling Manbearpig into the Shaman's minicave by the hand.

"Hey Mon!" came the relaxed greeting from the Nykterian Shaman.

"Hi." Said Manbearpig, noting the familiar Druidic garments of the Shaman.

Raelin stepped forward, rolling his eyes.  "Yes, this is all delightful.  Where is the prism of power?"

The Shaman looked Raelin up and down.  "The whatnow Mon?"

Raelin narrowed his eyes.  "Don't lie to me you fuzzy little..."

Ash took a step forward and gestured menacingly.  "Give us the prism."

"I don' be 'tinkin' we be givin' you anyting close to da prism boys.  Fo' statahs, dis 'ere elf knows full well dat the prism be belongin' to us for right and right."

"Elves?  What elves?" Raelin attempted.

The Shaman chuckled "We may be dumb, but we ain't stoopid mon.  You be wearin' all kindsa 'tings elven, startin' wit' yo' ears."

Raelin fidgeted.  The Bat would have to die, now.  "What does the Prism do for you, that some form of trade could not?"

The Shaman laughed "You trus' ol' Shaman boy, it be in yo' best int'rest as much as it is ours dat it be stayin' here"

Raelin seethed "That Prism is the property of the Elven people, and you will return it to us or suffer the consequences."

"Ho ho!  You gots dis ahl backwards Mon - you take da Prism, and we all be facin' da consiquences.  You'd destroy ahl da Nyktar people bad for bad, den you gets into ahl kinda trouble bye and bye."

"Are you threatening me?" Raelin stepped forward.

Jay El, seeing where all this was going, stepped past Raelin and towards the Shaman with a phrase of his own, backed with the magic of mind control "Go get the prism of power and give it to us."

The Shaman squinted, but was unable to resist, and got up to go get the prism, but yelled as he did so "Thieves!  They be takin' the prism!"

"...aaand don't talk.  Noted for next time." Jay El sighed and shrugged "live 'n learn"

Maybe their giant, adorable eyes shoot lasers?

The group followed Raelin into the darkness of the Nykter caves, ready for anything - be it trap, armed guards, or some kind of insidious spell or an ambush.  Eventually, the caves were simply too small for Tribby to follow, so she cast whisper, a mystical walkie-talkie spell, which would allow her to hear and speak to the party despite the distance.

They could all feel the Nykter eyes all around them... waiting, watching...

One ran up to the group.  "Hi!" it said.

Manbearpig smiled.  "Hi there."

"Whatcha doin?"

"Oh... we're looking for the Shaman, actually."

"Oh!" the little Nykter smiled, and grabbed Manbearpig's hand.  "I know the way, fowow me!"

The group looked at each other and shrugged.  Thus far, criminal masterminds, they weren't.

"What's your name?"

"Oh, uh... Manbearpig..."

"Hehe, that's a funny name.  I'm Baco, I'm four!"

"That's great Baco.  So, how far is the Shaman?"

"Oh, not far.  I know the way, 'cause I'm four!"

"Awesome!"

...

Ahem

Eventually, Raelin and Med took their eyes off each other long enough so as to acknowledge the rest of the party.

"Who are your friends?"

Raelin laughed, "hardly the word I would use, but, these are some folks who would be helping to facilitate our journey.  We plan on travelling to the West on a secret mission, and, as I mentioned, shortly thereafter, to the Dwarves of the North.  This fellow here is Ash."

Ash, hearing his name and noting being pointed at, tipped his non-existent hat at the beautiful woman.  It had been a long time since he'd seen such a specimen.  Humans seemed to be something of an endangered species as of late - attractive ones, even more so.

"And this is Jay El" he continued.

Jay El dampened down his body's desires for the woman and smiled politely.  He would be faithful to his wife until the end of existence.  But man... whatta rack.

"And..." Raelin finished, switching to common, "I actually have no idea what the druid's name is.  He doesn't talk much."

"It's Manbearpig." Manbearpig said.

The two Elven citizens exchanged a knowing glance.  "How nice for you." Raelin smiled.