Post by Varga on Jan 17, 2022 20:19:34 GMT
You know old abandoned houses?
The silent kind? The kind which have their doors barred and windows unboarded to make sure the window dressings get all tattered and dusty over the years for an added effect?
Yeah, one of those.
You know what you shouldn’t do with them? Apart from cannonballing inside at full speed through the front door and the first floor window with your mates while pretending you’re the strike team? You shouldn’t go looking for their cellars.
Like, honestly, what are you expecting to find there? There’s precious little probability that a cellar of such an establishment contains a litter of golden retriever puppies eager to be adopted by an adventuring party. In fact, the probability of that is exactly 1 in 999,999. Which makes it less probable than defeating a tarrasque by using a stick to persuade it to play fetch with you.
Do you know what that cellar is likely to contain?
If you, however, ever find yourself foregoing all the useful tips scattered in this text, and, in fact, go barrel-rolling into an abandoned house, finding its cellar, striking a conversation with the resident madman, and going down the stone steps to the cellar to check out suspicious noises*… well, first, take a moment to re-assess your life choices. And then… To be perfectly candid, I don’t really have any advice for the "then" part. You ending up in this situation would indicate that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, any useful advice is wasted on you anyway.
So, I guess, improvise.
Glint stood, frozen with fear and disgust, trying his best to look between the insane elf at the altar, the statue in front of him, and the people-faced mannequins on the pews. He marveled at Kavel’s calmness that allowed the goliath to sit next to one of the abominable creatures and even pretend to strike a conversation with it. He also was surprised at Kelne’s resourcefulness at creating a copy of themselves to approach the "happy couple". And he tried to think of a non-lethal spell he could hit Tayz with to make him stop talking. Non-lethal options came harder to him than usual, which, given the situation, wasn’t that shocking.
‘And, frankly, I think you’re a dangerous madman, and you’ve killed a lot of innocent people, and now you need to pay for it,’ the cleric said matter-of-factly. ‘So, there, you’re gong down*.’
He motioned to the giant snake that stroke, lightning-fast, at the elf. Still, the statue of his groom was quicker, and gave a rather quizzical glare to the snake it was now holding in its iron grasp.
The elf’s face, peaceful so far, took on a troubled expression. Thin and gaunt like a stick, together with his long hair, he uncannily resembled a wick leading into a barrel full of smoke powder. Just in case things needed to become more unsettling.
‘What… what are you doing?!’ he shrieked, voice grating at the party’s nerves with its manic tones. ‘Are you trying to ruin my beautiful wedding?! This day was supposed to be the happiest in my life, I won’t let you ruin it!’
Glint quickly went through the options. His thought detection spell still showed waves of love radiating from the statue. It wasn’t normal love, though. It was borderline manic obsession, and coming from the other side of that border. His eyes caught on the huge bottle of what looked suspiciously like love potion affixed to the statue’s back. He disliked manipulations of all sorts, magical ones in particular. And he couldn’t stop focusing on that philter. As if removing it was the most pressing concern in a room with a raging lunatic, massive living statue, and a party intent on fighting both.
‘Wait!’ Glint jumped in between Tayz and the elf. ‘We’re here to help! That was… a healing venomous snake! You know, your groom looks a bit…’ he stumbled.
Undead?
Enchanted through dark magic?
Being turned into an unstoppable rage-fueled abomination?
'Pale,' Glint continued diplomatically. 'Tayz here just wanted to make him better…'
'No I didn't!' Tays would have said, if his beak wasn't suddenly clamped shut by a gloved fire genasi hand.
'I've got another thing that would make him better. Right here,' Glint continued, producing an illusion of a large bottle with acid-pink contents.
The elf's eyes grew bigger.
'Really? What is it?*'
'The same thing you have there, just more potent,' Glint nodded towards the philter attached to the statue, and thanked whatever mental ailment affected the elf for making him overlook a random person having exactly the same bottle of exactly the same liquid exactly at hand. 'Can I give it to him?*'
The elf hesitated for a moment, but then nodded. For once, Glint wasn't the most reckless coward in the room.
As the wizard was making his way to the altar, he regretfully had to let Tayz go.
‘Are we just letting a madman go?!’ The cleric asked indignantly as Glint was replacing the real philter with an illusory one, giving it his best miming performance.
'I say we give comrade Glint's plan a chance!*' Kavel reasoned.
Naturally, it wasn't until the wizard went all the way to the overpowered statue, replaced the potion on its back, nodded to the mad elf in front of him, turned his back on both, and made his way back through the rows of human-faced mannequins that it occurred to him that the philter of love takes an hour to lose its effect.
So, he spent the next five minutes of his life standing next to his companions and making a very confident face as he was expecting all manner of eldritch horrors erupt from the earth itself after the elf's marriage vows were over. Or maybe he was reading a shopping list out loud, Glint didn't know elven well enough to discern.
Luckily for Glint and for three inexcusably naïve people who put their faith in him, the philter affected undead differently. So the wizard made his best competent expression as they watched the statue punch a hole through its suitor and then proceed to reap him into an assortment of ribbons. Yes, that was totally an effect Glint had expected and not just a fluke of luck he'd never earned.
As Kelne provided them all a short audience with the ghost of the statue, they've established a couple of details that really weren't all that important. To the ghost's credit, it's hard to reveal anything that would trump 'a face-stealing madman in a basement' without the ability to speak conventionally. At least they've established that the poor ghost elf had no living relatives and was finally at peace, which were the important parts.
The party celebrated the 'wedding' by pouring the remaining love philters into the ground and taking a face to the person they've found defaced on the street previously. It did jack-shit, so perhaps that was a mystery for another time and a headache for another adventurer. And in the meantime, the priests of Celune would have a marvelous subject for illustrating their compassion.
And the cellar… well, perhaps after the Watch cleaned and disinfected it to within an inch of its life, it did catch an eye of a family of golden retrievers. Yes, let's all tell ourselves that and go to bed. Because if we're right, then we've made a very lucky guess. And if we're wrong… we'll at least be able to sleep tonight.
* These and other amusing entries are taken from E.G. Stoke's "Compendium of the Famous Last Words", 2nd edition, currently on loan at the Runaway Library.
The silent kind? The kind which have their doors barred and windows unboarded to make sure the window dressings get all tattered and dusty over the years for an added effect?
Yeah, one of those.
You know what you shouldn’t do with them? Apart from cannonballing inside at full speed through the front door and the first floor window with your mates while pretending you’re the strike team? You shouldn’t go looking for their cellars.
Like, honestly, what are you expecting to find there? There’s precious little probability that a cellar of such an establishment contains a litter of golden retriever puppies eager to be adopted by an adventuring party. In fact, the probability of that is exactly 1 in 999,999. Which makes it less probable than defeating a tarrasque by using a stick to persuade it to play fetch with you.
Do you know what that cellar is likely to contain?
- Dust.
- Spiders.
- Unnamable cosmic horrors.
- Muttering madmen who charm people with philters of love because it’s the only potion their insanity allowed them to learn brewing, probably in the same way a monkey can learn writing poems, i.e. by your sheer bloody luck.List item 5
- Muttering madmen who steal people’s faces to put them on grotesque mannequin-like dolls.
- Any combination of the abovementioned items that will make you most uncomfortable.
If you, however, ever find yourself foregoing all the useful tips scattered in this text, and, in fact, go barrel-rolling into an abandoned house, finding its cellar, striking a conversation with the resident madman, and going down the stone steps to the cellar to check out suspicious noises*… well, first, take a moment to re-assess your life choices. And then… To be perfectly candid, I don’t really have any advice for the "then" part. You ending up in this situation would indicate that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, any useful advice is wasted on you anyway.
So, I guess, improvise.
Glint stood, frozen with fear and disgust, trying his best to look between the insane elf at the altar, the statue in front of him, and the people-faced mannequins on the pews. He marveled at Kavel’s calmness that allowed the goliath to sit next to one of the abominable creatures and even pretend to strike a conversation with it. He also was surprised at Kelne’s resourcefulness at creating a copy of themselves to approach the "happy couple". And he tried to think of a non-lethal spell he could hit Tayz with to make him stop talking. Non-lethal options came harder to him than usual, which, given the situation, wasn’t that shocking.
‘And, frankly, I think you’re a dangerous madman, and you’ve killed a lot of innocent people, and now you need to pay for it,’ the cleric said matter-of-factly. ‘So, there, you’re gong down*.’
He motioned to the giant snake that stroke, lightning-fast, at the elf. Still, the statue of his groom was quicker, and gave a rather quizzical glare to the snake it was now holding in its iron grasp.
The elf’s face, peaceful so far, took on a troubled expression. Thin and gaunt like a stick, together with his long hair, he uncannily resembled a wick leading into a barrel full of smoke powder. Just in case things needed to become more unsettling.
‘What… what are you doing?!’ he shrieked, voice grating at the party’s nerves with its manic tones. ‘Are you trying to ruin my beautiful wedding?! This day was supposed to be the happiest in my life, I won’t let you ruin it!’
Glint quickly went through the options. His thought detection spell still showed waves of love radiating from the statue. It wasn’t normal love, though. It was borderline manic obsession, and coming from the other side of that border. His eyes caught on the huge bottle of what looked suspiciously like love potion affixed to the statue’s back. He disliked manipulations of all sorts, magical ones in particular. And he couldn’t stop focusing on that philter. As if removing it was the most pressing concern in a room with a raging lunatic, massive living statue, and a party intent on fighting both.
‘Wait!’ Glint jumped in between Tayz and the elf. ‘We’re here to help! That was… a healing venomous snake! You know, your groom looks a bit…’ he stumbled.
Undead?
Enchanted through dark magic?
Being turned into an unstoppable rage-fueled abomination?
'Pale,' Glint continued diplomatically. 'Tayz here just wanted to make him better…'
'No I didn't!' Tays would have said, if his beak wasn't suddenly clamped shut by a gloved fire genasi hand.
'I've got another thing that would make him better. Right here,' Glint continued, producing an illusion of a large bottle with acid-pink contents.
The elf's eyes grew bigger.
'Really? What is it?*'
'The same thing you have there, just more potent,' Glint nodded towards the philter attached to the statue, and thanked whatever mental ailment affected the elf for making him overlook a random person having exactly the same bottle of exactly the same liquid exactly at hand. 'Can I give it to him?*'
The elf hesitated for a moment, but then nodded. For once, Glint wasn't the most reckless coward in the room.
As the wizard was making his way to the altar, he regretfully had to let Tayz go.
‘Are we just letting a madman go?!’ The cleric asked indignantly as Glint was replacing the real philter with an illusory one, giving it his best miming performance.
'I say we give comrade Glint's plan a chance!*' Kavel reasoned.
Naturally, it wasn't until the wizard went all the way to the overpowered statue, replaced the potion on its back, nodded to the mad elf in front of him, turned his back on both, and made his way back through the rows of human-faced mannequins that it occurred to him that the philter of love takes an hour to lose its effect.
So, he spent the next five minutes of his life standing next to his companions and making a very confident face as he was expecting all manner of eldritch horrors erupt from the earth itself after the elf's marriage vows were over. Or maybe he was reading a shopping list out loud, Glint didn't know elven well enough to discern.
Luckily for Glint and for three inexcusably naïve people who put their faith in him, the philter affected undead differently. So the wizard made his best competent expression as they watched the statue punch a hole through its suitor and then proceed to reap him into an assortment of ribbons. Yes, that was totally an effect Glint had expected and not just a fluke of luck he'd never earned.
As Kelne provided them all a short audience with the ghost of the statue, they've established a couple of details that really weren't all that important. To the ghost's credit, it's hard to reveal anything that would trump 'a face-stealing madman in a basement' without the ability to speak conventionally. At least they've established that the poor ghost elf had no living relatives and was finally at peace, which were the important parts.
The party celebrated the 'wedding' by pouring the remaining love philters into the ground and taking a face to the person they've found defaced on the street previously. It did jack-shit, so perhaps that was a mystery for another time and a headache for another adventurer. And in the meantime, the priests of Celune would have a marvelous subject for illustrating their compassion.
And the cellar… well, perhaps after the Watch cleaned and disinfected it to within an inch of its life, it did catch an eye of a family of golden retrievers. Yes, let's all tell ourselves that and go to bed. Because if we're right, then we've made a very lucky guess. And if we're wrong… we'll at least be able to sleep tonight.
* These and other amusing entries are taken from E.G. Stoke's "Compendium of the Famous Last Words", 2nd edition, currently on loan at the Runaway Library.
