Short Cut Switchback Watch The Sides! - 23/04/2024 - Mendal

“BOYS! THE WINTERSPORT WINNING LEGEND OF THE HOUSE IS BACK!!!” Mendal shouted from the entrance of the house with the door wide open. The returning dwarf was half in the house and half outside when he shouted, allowing not just anyone inside the house to hear him, but everyone outside too.

Mendal walked from the entrance to the kitchen searching for his friends. He continued to converse with them though, shouting as he did, despite not knowing precisely where they were. They were not in the kitchen. They were not in the house.

Two Sending spells later, Mendal discovered Archie was at Daring Academy (where a majority of his time was spent) researching locations where he could find the ingredients for his Potion of Longevity. Kavel (in equally predictable fashion, given his area of expertise) was performing strength drills at Kavel’s Corner in the Thicc Bois Compound. Promises were made to return home as soon as possible to listen to the, as promised, amazing story that Mendal said he had for them.



“We did fucking win, yes! Spectacularly too!’” was Mendal’s response to Archie’s question whether he had won.

The other boys had finally returned to the house.

However, storytime did not immediately follow the boys’ return. Mendal first insisted on Archie casting the Magnificent Mansion spell, and creating a large environment with lots of snow in it, so that with their combined magic, Mendal could create a scaled down version of the mountain sleigh course to better recount his tale.



Mendal had just finished putting the final touches on his magically fabricated five foot tall, scaled down mountain. He had Kavel plaster the model mountain with snow from Archie’s magically conjured winter mansion. Mendal looked at his creation with pride and announced, “perfect! This is a great replica of the course! Fitting to help me recount my legendary wintersport tale!”

“It’s good. Was it necessary?” Kavel asked, first admiring the model mountain, and at the same time questioning why fifteen minutes of preparation had to go into Mendal’s story-prop, while Mendal insisted on saying nothing about his recent adventure until the model was finished. Kavel then added, “I didn’t need a model when I told you both about my ice-hockey win in Galavir.”

“Ice-hockey doesn’t compare to team-sleigh racing!” Mendal said, beginning his rebuttal to what, in his mind, was an insane comparison. “You can get routinely beat-up in hockey, but you can routinely die in sleigh-racing! And I’ve survived and won at it twice now! Legends like me deserve story-aids and commemorative items of their accomplishments - shame the snow from the manion isn’t permanent.”

“So, are we finally ready?” Archie asked, eager to finally hear the tale of Mendal’s recent adventure, and eager to steer Mendal away from more of his self-aggrandising without having even begun the tale.

“Yes, Yes! Of course!” Mendal said before clapping his hands together to signal his readiness to begin. “So, you remember I read the unsigned letter inviting me to compete in the race?”

Kavel and Archie did remember Mendal’s proud reading of the invite. They also remembered him not inviting them to join him as part of his team since, as Mendal put it, “No! Your ridiculously strong hands will break the sleigh just touching it, Kavel, and Archie old-boy - well, you’re getting frail aren’t you. I’ll just put the old team back together.”

However, as Mendal recounted, there was a problem with finding his old Dawnland Sleighers team; Chartreuse, Ronkk and Yearu.

“I couldn’t find a single one of the fuckers!” Mendal pointed out angrily. “I looked hard for those absent bastards!”

“You didn’t use your Sending spell to contact them?” Kavel enquired, often a recipient of Mendal’s Sending Spell for all sorts of requests and commands from Mendal.

“Noooooo,” Mendal replied, shaking his head. “Remember what I said about that plonker, Ronkk, last time? He’s a decent sleigh driver and surprisingly competent song-caster, but he wastes my bloody Sending spells! I’d have to use all my magical reserves just on him, if I tried explaining what I need him for - and how I’m in his brain - magically speaking to him. No, I just looked for them the old fashioned way. Gave up after a couple of hours, and headed to the Dragon for a drink.”

“To find other adventurers?” Archie asked, The Three Headed Dragon being a popular place among adventurers.

“... sure.”




Mendal recounted the events of his second team-sleigh race with his new team, which he dubbed, ‘The New Dawnland Sleighers’. Mendall told his friends about Firahaly the djinn and vassal lord to the queen that hosted the previous sleigh-race, which was also in her realm between the Planes of Water and Air. At the same time, Mendal recounted; meeting the other teams, the choosing of sleigh enhancements, his team members, and the race itself.

Elarris - Mendal recalled meeting Elarris for the first time. “He was eating the cheapest item on the menu, when I saw him in the Dragon. I thought ‘here’s an adventurer who’ll join me for the money ignoring the dangers - nice!’” Apart from Elarris’s willingness to join Mendal, the dwarven cleric had other positive things to say about the human fighter. “Good team player; him and Thurghor made sure Fin didn’t go shooting out of the sleigh when I took the first shortcut dive from one part of the track to another part. Elarris was good solid for keeping the Chain-shot cannon loaded, and a pretty decent shot with it too. Big hit with the White Dragonborn team as well; he could speak draconic fluently you see. He’s got a nice magical sword too, but he was a bit touchy about it. I’ll get him to let me have a proper look at it some other time.”

Finnegan - “Now I remember casting a Fire Wall to screw over the opposition last time round, but Fin, the sly fox is bloody nasty!” Mendal told his friends, recalling a couple of nasty applications of the Sleep spell that Finnegan casted on the opposing sleigh teams. “Imagine falling asleep at the reins while racing a horse - now imagine the horse is a sleigh hurtling down a mountain at a much faster speed! Fin didn’t cast hazards for the other team, he made them the hazards themselves!”

Mendal (himself) - “I’m an absolute legend at sleigh steering!” Mendal considered this boast to be indisputable fact. “Never underestimate the power of the Enhance Ability spell, too!” This was a statement that both Mendal and Archie stood by. “I gave Bull Strength to the entire team to make sure we got our sleigh out of the gate first for a head start. I gave Cat’s Grace to Thurghor, my co-driver, and I for better controlling the wheel round tricky corners.”

“Isn’t that cheating?” Kavel asked, if not also insisting.

“Piss off!” Mendal replied, “It’s ‘enhancing’ what skills are already there, not creating skills!”


Thurghor - “He was the other magical murderer on the team, and not a bad driver too. Rather convenient actually that his long bugbear arms can comfortably reach around me to take the wheel when needed.” Mendal said in praise of his bugbear teammate. “When he wasn’t my co-pilot, he was unleashing Fog Clouds in front of the opposition’s team so we maintained our lead. And he was the bane of the gnome team with their metal enhancements and his Heat Metal spell. Shame his mange hasn’t gotten any better since I last saw him. He seems fine with it though.”




“Splendid Mendal,” Archie said praising his friend for his victory at the invitational sleigh race and in addition gaining the missing magical ingredient needed for crafting the zephyr armour. “What fortuitous luck! Strands of a djinn’s hair is what you need.”

“I know right?” Mendal said, agreeing that it was indeed good luck on his part that Firahaly, Mendal’s host for the race, was in fact a djinn. “I had to trade him for it though. Fortunately I had that wooden trinket with me. You know the one? The one of the minotaur that has a magical property about it, that reveals the person holding it their true emotional state at the time? Well, I swapped it for some hair. Two locks of hair! I could make a pair of zephyr armour sets now, instead of just one. Although, I don’t know if only making one would make that one more valuable than having two, which might give me more name recognition?” Mendal considered for a moment. “I’ll consider making a second, perhaps.” He then stopped to consider something else. “You know, I can’t remember where I found that wooden minotaur figurine? I may have even picked it up from our communal box of unwanted trinkets.”

“Why would you pick something up from the unwanted box?” Kavel asked, surprised. After all, all three of the house members use the box precisely to get rid of some of the unwanted gear that they are rewarded with as adventurers.

“It was good for the times I can’t escape cleric work,” Mendal clarified. “Some people tell their cleric a lot of bollocks about how they feel. That wooden figurine would help cut right to the chase. People would still deny what the figure said they were feeling though.”

Archie was thinking about what Mendal had previously told him about Carric and Nevarra’s magical essence and how that related to their sentience as living hammers. “Carric and Nevarra - your fellow crafting team, won’t some of their essence, or Carric’s essence be imbued into the armour when you make it? Also permanently lost?”

Mendal shrugged back to his wizard friend. “That’s what I said! I cast Identify on them and know the small print of their weird quasi-immortality, and what magical crafting will do. They seem fine with it though. Bigger problem is whether or not I have to take up gambling to fund making the armour. I have strands of a djinn's hair, but the rest of the material cost is still going to be a hefty price! Maybe I should have stuck to making vicious weapons instead, the other magical option my elven instructors gave me? I’d need slaad teeth, which is gonna be a fight and a half to get. But at least the rest of the material cost for vicious weapons is more bearable!”