Apple Heist - 03/11/2021 - A Kavel Perspective

Root Penrosa’s Residence

Many of us here at Mr. Root Penrosa’s mansion, on the upper terrace, were recently together on a previous adventure. Comrades Celina, Kelne and Derthaad - helped me transport mining equipment to Stoneleaf. And fight the three hags that conned us into being their bodyguards. On the way back from Stoneleaf, Celina convinced us to come to Port Ffirst and accept the apple adventure that Mr. Penrosa had advertised. So, I knew I would see Celina, Kelne and Derthaad here. Comrade Anwyn, though, was a pleasant surprise.

Anwyn is more like me than the others. A strong, barbarian type. Tough as nails. I last saw them during an adventure with magical pumpkins. We are here now for magical apples. This made me think, “is my fellow strength-enthusiast and I only destined to meet when fruit is key to the adventure?”

Also there was comrade Gerhard. I hadn’t seen him since the funny ducks adventure. He seemed to be carrying even more scraps of parchment than when I first met him.

All together, my team for the day is the usual mixed bag of primarily magic-users. Now, there is variability amongst their arcane specialties, but one thing they share in common, even with Anywn, is an affection for small animals. Dogs in this case.

Mr Penrosa has two plant-like dogs. The only other planet-creatures I have seen were corpse-flowers, and they are foul creatures. These dogs were alright. Bessie is more plant-like, and ‘Bark’, more tree-like. All my comrades were having fun petting them. I was more interested in whether Mr Penrosa had a gym in his huge house. I asked the timid looking butler, Ted. Ted was timid in character, but strong in physique. Ted was a metal golem. He must weigh at least a ton. But, Mr. Penrosa joined us before I could get an answer about the gym, and before I could discover if I could lift Ted. If he’s a little under 1,000lbs - I can do it!

Mr Penrosa, was very interested in the Magical Library that me, Celina and Kelne had previously visited. He had heard the apples from its greenhouse had a special quality and wished to study them. We were tasked with retrieving some of the special apples and bringing them back to him. 50gp each if we were successful.

Mr Penroas is a very studious man. I was surprised when he did not wish to join us and visit an unusual and very large library. Nobody dies in a library. Books can’t harm you. There is zero risk of death. But, Mr. Root appears to be more of an academic type than comrade Glint - Glint at least splits his time between the desk and the field. I bet these two would get on though, if they met.

Mr. Penrosa told us we could find the library currently residing next to Port Ffirst’s lighthouse. So off we went.


Off to the Lighthouse Library

I would be able to see the caretaker of the library again, Chonk. I thought to myself how that would be nice. I then remembered that the library was my only adventure spent with Mr. Faust, which made going to the library a bit sad.

On the way to the library, we stopped off at Celina’s shop to pick up some apple sacks. I had volunteered to help carry as many apples back as I could carry. Some for Mr. Penrosa, and the rest for Celina.

As we got nearer to the lighthouse, the library was also in view. If the library wasn’t magical in nature, I would have said it was precariously balanced on the rocks near the lighthouse. No one would naturally be able to sit a building on an unstable platform without magic.

Kelne and Celina opened the library the way we did before, and the others in our teams got to make their first steps into this immense library.


Meeting Chonk Again

It seems that the scholars of Daring Heights do not miss an opportunity to be in this library when it appears, now that they know how to enter. The place was busy with Daring Academy members.

Chonk greeted us and served us tea. Celina and Kelne remarked that Chonk didn’t seem to recognise us. He says he’s very forgetful. He didn’t recognise where my chakan-poleaxe came from. Surely it is easy to remember I was given the weapon in the Armoury here? If not, it made me wonder if anyone broke the rule about taking books out of here, would he even remember a missing book?

Chonk warned us that if we wanted apples from the Greenhouse, we would need to get there before the kitchen staff finished their supply run, and to be careful there. I guess it’s his duty to give all the liability warnings. But really. It’s a greenhouse. What could possibly hurt anyone in there? A sharp leaf?


The Greenhouse

The greenhouse was immense. It must have been four times as wide as the Armoury. Actually double that - the greenhouse had a second floor. But, there wasn’t really a second floor, so much as there were strong vines you could walk on top of, half way up.

We noticed a magnificent, translucent apple tree on the canopy level. So, off we went to pick some apples.

Anywn noticed a cube creature by our apple tree. There were more cubes when we got nearer. These gelatinous cubes had sucked up the remaining dozen apples from the tree. We could see the apples inside their cube bodies. Off they went away from us.

I was ready to go up to the cubes and put them and the apples they had into Celina’s apple sacks. Celina tried a more diplomatic approach to getting the cubes to part with the apples we needed. But, it was unusual diplomacy. I thought she would try to reason with them, but instead she suggested a game of hide and seek, and the four cubes, excited; split up in pairs and fled. Well, this was weird, but what harm could come from this? It’s not like the greenhouse would have corpse-flowers residing in here.

Derthaad, Kelne and Anywn followed the pair of cubes that went northwest. Me, Gerhard and Celina followed the pair that went southeast. It was a bit unstable walking on these vines. I led my group. I am no navigator, but in the absence of a scout, putting the strongest first seemed wise. At the time the decision was made as a matter of good protocol. Good, but unnecessary.

Well, I was quickly proven wrong, as I could hear some plant-like creature attacking Kelne and Anwyn back where they were.

I turned around to try and see them.

As I turned back to face the right way again, I saw two pairs of orange eyes merged into the greenery before me. There was no time to get my battle rage set. Or even reach for a weapon. Celina and Gerhard were standing on the same vine as I, whilst I blocked the way forward to a fork in the road where one set of eyes came from the left fork, and the other pair from the right. I was unexpectedly blocking these camouflage creatures from currently advancing on my comrades. Taken by surprise like this, I quickly understood that this was actually the best we could hope for in this situation. Unarmed and unprepared, I atleast stood in the way protecting my comrades as the pair of displacer beasts lunged at my position on the vines, and savagely ripped into me with their claws and teeth.

It was an admirable ambush. I fell, hoping that my inadvertent positioning on the vines, shielded my comrades from harm, for at least a little while. As I fell to the ground, I lost consciousness.

...

Seeing the ground before me, my eyes were open. I leapt up, drew my poleaxe into my hands and darted my gaze quickly from side to side trying to see the enemy before it could engage with me again. But there were only allies before me.

“Where are they?!” I yelled at my comrades.

I was informed that the green monster facing Anwyn, Kelne and Derthaad had been defeated, as had one of the displacer beasts, by Kelne polymorphing into a great-ape and biffing in on the head. I remarked how maybe Kelne should have the nickname, ‘Smashy Hands’.

The other displacer beast fled. We still had apples to chase. There would be no revenge for me on this day. However, if ever I was back here again, I would go back to this greenhouse and hunt down that last displacer beast and see how much damage it could do while I’m battle raging.

It turns out the above suggestion would be appreciated by the cubes. We caught up to them, and I used my gift for talking with animals. I don’t know how I do it, but I was able to act as a translator between the cubes and my comrades.

The cubes were in fact the kitchen staff members on a supply run to get the apples for cooking. Celina, with me as translator, was able to convince the cubes to swap the magical apples for apples Celina had on her. The little cubes, who were grateful for us bashing the monsters in here who bully them, accepted. We now had eleven magical apples, which was strange because the cubes took the last twelve apples on the tree. They must have forgotten to give us the twelve apple. But, they were already hopping back to the kitchen by this point and we had more than enough apples for Mr. Penrosa.


The Game Room

Outside the greenhouse, we met Chonk, who said we still had time to visit another room in the library before the leaving bells began to ring. So, we agreed to go to the Game Room.

The game room was smaller than the greenhouse. No forest of plants and trees. Much easier to see ambushing monsters!

There was a rectangular, table shaped block in the middle. A message floated above the block, with rules on how to play the game here.

Who seek to find

A way to leave

Their lives behind

Take a card and take a step,

Last until you reach the deck

Cards’ effects gang aft agley,

But outside they hold no sway

I wasn’t sure what the words meant, but drawing cards and stepping forward on a path sounded like maybe this was an ambush of a different sort. We split into pairs, and I did so wearingly. I paired up with Kelne, the only true healer here, and we went to the part of the room where a yellow path led back to the centre block. The dragonborns went to the start of the blue path, whilst Gerhard and Celina took position on the red path.

Using their mind, Kelne picked a card from the floating deck above the centre block. Their card had a valiant knight on it, and we - well they - gained a knight defender. A member of the other pairs did the same. Red team did not seem to be getting on, and in team blue, Derthaad was naked. His clothes and equipment were nowhere to be seen.

“Derthaad! Why are you naked?” I shouted from across the room at him, and even Anywn, his teammate for the game, was looking at me, signaling with gestures that they don’t know what’s going on.

Derthaad, I guess to his credit, was composed about the matter.

“I’m a barbarian now!”, he responded, pleased with himself.

“That’s not how we do it!” I yelled back.

“Anywn! Tell him he’s doing barbarian wrong!” My words fell on deaf ears. It was my turn to draw a card for my team and hope we could advance.

I drew a card. No knight for me. In fact, nothing. Too much nothing. A nothing that was now engulfing me! Darkness…

… the darkness disappeared as I found myself standing in front of Ka’zzam’s relative’s manor in the fire plane! I was incorporeal. I passed through the front door with ease and found myself in the empty mansion. No mice. No comrades. No corporeal presence. But, I did have clothes!

I was about to go see if the other suits of armour in this mansion would wake up before a wandering soul. But then - I’m back in the game room and in front of the block. Kelne was holding a tankard in victory. I asked who won. Kelne said they did. There was one more tankard on the block.

“I was in team yellow with Kelne, so I won too”, I announced to my comrades as I took the last tankard. As I did, we heard the sound of two bells ringing. We must have missed the first bell during the game.


See You Later Moving Library

We managed to say goodbye to Chonk before leaving the library. It almost seemed pointless, given that he’d only forget about us, if we came back to visit. But then, maybe repeat visits would help his memory?

We stood outside the library with a bunch of scholars who had also exited the building. They had nothing in their hands. We had a bag of eleven apples.


Back to Root Penrosa’s Estate

Back at Mr. Penrosa’s place, we gave him the bag of eleven apples. I told him how there should have been twelve, but the kitchen staff got mixed up when trading the Celina’s shop apples for the magical ones. Celina and Derthaad looked on approvingly at my explanation, I think.

Mr. Penrosa gave us each our 50gp reward and took note of our addresses to keep correspondence with us, in case we were interested in his findings on the apples.

Mr. Penrosa also identified mine and Kelne’s tankards as Tankards of Plenty Confusion. Like my pumpkin spice goblet, the tankard could refill itself after some time. Unlike the goblet, the tankard would pick one of the six liquid offerings I would get, whenever I tried to use it.

A few days later I got a package from Mr. Penrosa with a note explaining the apples were Iridescent Apples, and inside the package was an apple itself. The apple could be used to help find things. It would point in the right direction. Could be useful. Best not to keep it with any other apples I might have, in case I accidentally take a bite from it.