The Empty Tables-Beets the Beetle-09/03/22

After spending a week helping Coll out around the Fort Tavern he still won’t let slip how he made that city fly. Infact I’m sure that just sending me on this job to ‘help out another tavern needing my strength for a delivery of some new tables’ line was just an excuse to stop my questioning before I finally broke him. Well Colll..you win…for now…Besides I couldn’t past up chance to get in the good graces of The Gilded Mirror, I’d heard it was every performers dream!

Talking of which, there was quite the ‘cast’ of characters to aid in this cursed table mystery. Felix, the fanciest and quite easily loudest dwarf I’ve met. Wanda, a natural beauty-I mean she literally has leaves for hair. Herit, a handsome lad as humans go, and finally strong and reliable dragonborn constable Derthaad.

Upon all arriving at this buggin’fine establisment, we met with the boss Lecocanto in his pad, which had some very snazzy curtains, who spun us the tale of his troublin’tables.

Apparently these tables were carved by
Deferren Forest Ground, a renown woodsmith of D’Avalon-he’d even made Big King Lion’s Throne himself-out of the finest moleberry wood.

Since being in the bar people have had weird things happen if sitting at these tables from getting covered in salad, to having their stuff stolen. It all sounded like pretty typical tavern action to me, but I wasn’t gonna lose my way in by just saying so, especially once we got shown the dining theatre. I will wow crowds on that stage or my bottom half ain’t beetle!
——————


So four potentially dangerous lion decorated tables in a bar and 5 adventurers, what do we do? Why. we sat down and have a drink together at one of'flittin course! Now I don’t know whether magically appearing ale is stronger than the usual stuff, but my first tankard clanked my talons I’ll tell ya! Though, it was nothing compared to what happened to the others. Derthaad was down before he’d even finished his flagon, Kelnar thought he was turning to stone, Felix started shouting about a dragon, and Wanda screamed so loudly that she was being dragged by demons into the abyss, that I rushed to help her and we collided. It definitely seemed either someone had ‘spiked’ our drinks, or something buggin'weird was going on with these tables.

I suggested maybe rather that ‘us’ drinking at the tables, we give the ‘tables’ a drink, yet after it magically ‘downed’ a barrel of mead, it didn’t seem to do very much different, even when talking to it.

It was then it came to me, like Pa always says, “When looking a a problem, sometimes it’s good to look at it another way.” And would ya buggin’believe it, when I flipped over the table, there was a note on the bottom along with a ‘X’ on one of the legs, that looked ever so slightly darker than the others.
“Don’t put all the X’s together, it gets weird.”

…Welp.

After moving outside, Felix put the last leg into place, in an explosion of light appeared a monstrous, terrifying…ADORABLE KITTY!

The table kitty told us his name was Soul-Short for ‘Seething anger under floating lily pad’ and that he’d was not just a kitty, but a ‘WIZARD KITTY’ who had died fighting an evil fiend and trapped it with him inside a mulberry tree…The very same one used to make the lion tables…

It wasn’t the tables though that we needed to be worried about...But the silk made by silkworms that had eaten the leaves of the mulberry tree and make it into some very ‘snazzy curtains’…Uh oh…

Upon freeing our employer from the ‘man’ eating demon curtains and slicing and dicing them to ribbons, he was happy to grant us all a free week stay at Gilded Mirror, and even granted me permission, or should that be, ‘purrrmission’- thanks Soul heh-to perform that night on stage, with the rest of the party having the best seats and ‘tables’ in the house.