The Greatest Show on Toril! - 15/02/2024 - Archie’s Extracts

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The newish Dawnland adventurer, Cort, had tickets to visit the Liebling Brothers Circus in Neverwinter. Cort, a tabaxi monk, had previously been part of an adventuring group who had dealt with a rather large and dangerous delivery that had been incorrectly transported to Port Ffirst. The intended destination of the delivery was Port Llast in Neverwinter - wrong port, wrong continent. The delivery item itself? A tyrannosaurus rex, intended for the Liebling Brothers Circus currently stationed in Neverwinter!

Cort and the adventurers at the time saw to the safety of the dinosaur, and not least the safety of Port Ffirst’s citizens. Cort, a rather caring soul, was interested in following up his recent adventure and seeing that the dinosaur, which he took to calling, ‘Big Mouth’, had arrived safely at Port Llast and into the hands of the Liebling Brothers, and was being treated fairly and looked after well.

I was in Fort Ettin visiting Kruger for my monthly fitness evaluation, when I met Cort and some other new adventurers, who were equally persuaded to take Cort up on his offer of a ticket to the Liebling Brothers’ show.

I am more of a theatre goer than a circus spectator. But, a free ticket combined with new friends came together as an idea for a lovely excursion. In addition, as a wizard who has mastered the Polymorph spell, a tyrannosaurus rex is the pinnacle of polymorphable creatures. The combination of the Contingency spell, and contingent casting of the Polymorph spell into a giant-ape has saved my bacon once before. The giant-ape, and other giant creatures (giant-crocodile, giant-eagle, mammoth) all present marvellous utility for adventuring. But, whilst these marvels are relatively easy to come across, observe, and therefore acquire as a polymorph-able form, a t-rex is not so easy to locate, and as such is not usually a creature you will find a wizard, or any caster of the Polymorph spell, able to achieve. In fact, my wizard club friend Calla and I had considered a joint expedition back to the Beast Plane with the specific intention of spotting t-rexes.

Well, it is my good fortune that ahead of an expedition to the dangerous Plane of Beasts, a little trip to the circus, and one introduction to ‘Big Mouth’ later, I can now add tyrannosaurus rex to my repertoire of polymorphable forms!

Whilst the king of the dinosaurs was the expected highlight of the excursion to the circus (and well looked after, as were the other animals), there was an unexpected highlight, and an unexpected hijinx. This is to say, yours truly and his companion adventurers became the show attraction in the big-top, and then there was the mischievous matter of the pies.

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I am well read, if I do say so myself, on matters of; arcane lore, many historical matters, medicine, nature, many different religions, and I have such an inquisitive mind I find investigating almost any subject fascinating.
Studying and investigation bring me joy, but the breadth and depth of my knowledge can also be useful in all areas of life. Take for example, if you were to stumble upon a fairground attraction such as; guessing the weight of a gelatinous cube.
Whilst my adventuring friends all took part in various dextrous based games (and questionably suitable constitution-based glutinous competitions!) I partook in a prediction based game, where with my abundant knowledge, I was able to turn what would have been a mere guess into a very well educated calculation.

As I observed the gelatinous cube,I remembered reading about the average weight of gelatinous cubes, and factored in the larger mass of the cube presented. Kelkor, my new fellow wizard and dwarven friend, reminded me to factor into my calculation the foreign contents inside the cube (for example, we saw some bones of former victims). Being additionally well read on humanoid anatomy, it was simple enough for me to adjust my calculations with humanoid bones included before I reached my final weight estimation. To my delight, and the fairground attendant’s astonishment; I was exactly right!

The gelatinous cube bean-bag I won as my prize is quite comfortable and makes for an interesting piece in my study.

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Due to a disastrous incident with staff catering, we adventurers found ourselves as unexpected stage performers, and fortunately, while many of my party partook in some of the pies during the eating contest; they did not suffer quite as much as the staff did.

Beets - Kavel was happy to hear how Beets wrestled the toughest looking individual in the circus as part of the first round of performances. Beets, a fairy wild-warrior, outclassed the tall and muscular strong man. Alas, following Pipper’s first act was tough, and so the wrestling contest did not receive quite as much applause as one could have expected.
However, joining Pipper in a joint performance during the second round of spectacles garnered Beets the applause she deserved.
For the final performance, Beets’ display of strength was a sight to behold, lifting; Pipper’s summoned construct Pip, Pipper herself, and Kelkor, whilst all three of them were balanced atop Pipper’s summoned Resilient Sphere. Kavel has some suggestions on how to better grip a sphere to carry even more weight. Beets will have this strength-tutorial to look forward to on their next training session.

Cort - My new tabaxi monk friend made a blindfolded tightrope walk look as easy as a cakewalk. The spectacle was made more exhilarating for the crowd with Big Mouth walking under the tightrope, seemingly ready to swallow Cort whole if he lost balance and fell.
For the second round of events, Cort joined Kelkor to put on a target display, showing off Cort’s proficiency with throwing knives. For the third event, Cort’s masterful acrobatics came a cropper most regretfully. But fortunately, however, the team managed to salvage things in a manner that was thrilling for the spectators.

Kelkor - During the first round of performances we were all a little concerned about Kelkor’s mine-artist routine. Kelkor was fully dressed with clown make-up and our dwarven wizard friend made for quite a miserable-looking mime. His miming of a wall in front of his face could only best be described as adequate. However, his use of the shield spell to produce an actual, magical wall in front of him when his fire-breathing owl familiar targeted him with a stream of fire, showed all of us what a brilliant performer he was. The mimed wall was a truly clever set up for a shield spell display.
With Cort, for the second round of performances, Kelkor’s Mold Earth spell made for some rapidly produced targets for Cort’s throwing daggers to excite the audience. Although, Kelkor did get a little carried away with his exuberant and wild casting of the Firebolt cantrip. I’m sure a HR department would have a lot to say, if he did a repeat performance. As for the final performance; Kelkor has great balance!

Pipper - I’m glad I went before my lizardfolk artificer friend in the order of the first round of performances. Pipper’s magical and mechanical rollerblades combined with Longstrider magic, whilst fully armoured with her dazzling mechanical plate; provided a focal point one couldn’t tear one's eyes away from. The added Wall of Force based structure to roller skate on top, was spectacular to watch.
For the second performance, the roller skating Pipper raced a flying Beets. Mechanical magic won, but both got a fabulous round of applause.
During the final performance, Pipper exerted herself to manage the casting of her construct summon, Pip, and a Resilient Sphere to be the centrepiece of a tremendous balancing act. Pipper’s magical-boots derived flying, along with Beets’ own flying, provided necessary aid for the mishap triggered by a shove too forceful on the sphere from Big Mouth, and the resulting planned, but failed trapeze saves from Cort for Pip and for Kelkor.

Myself - As previously mentioned I’m glad my own first act performance was placed midway on the first act card, as it was a less showy affair, but true, I guess, to my ‘magician’ self. I had acquired a top hat, and using the Prestidigitation cantrip, I continuously made it seem like I was retrieving from inside the hat an unending supply of different trinkets, putting them all back in the hat as I went. Of course, in reality, nothing was being produced from inside the hat, I was merely conjuring many differently shaped temporary trinkets from a repeatedly cast cantrip, and displaying them one at a time, as if they were all being pulled out of a deceptively large hat; hand-mirror, quill, small knife, small wooden toy, things such as these. If the audience shouted out things they thought I would find, and I could conjure it, then I would to their amusement, and feign a look of perplexity. I also made a big act of not being able to find the ‘real’ item I was after - a glass of wine. I did this for ten minutes, whilst at the same time secretly casting the spell, Creation. When the spell was ready, I exclaimed, “found it! Finally that’s where my glass of wine wss!”, and ‘pulled out’ from the top hat a gigantic barrel of wine, five feet in diameter! I had managed to create a tankard too, and when I let some of the wine pour out on the floor for the audience to verify that it was indeed a barrel of wine, I then filled my tankard and drank some. The audience gave me a warm round of applause.
The team was very courageous in trusting me for the full team act I had in mind for the second act performance. We had stage hands tie up our arms to our body with padlocked chains inside a glass tank that was filling rapidly with water. The spectacle for the crowd was, of course; could we escape our chains fast enough to exit the tank before the water filled up the tank and drowned us? There was no real danger for us adventurers, of course… except during the most dangerous part of the performance where it looks like we’re all going to drown, and the fake walls go up to hide how we escape. You see, I wasn’t quite able to reach the top of the water and position my mouth above the water, so I could cast the verbal components of the Scatter spell, which under cover of the raised walls, would hide the teleportation magic that would send us safely off stage, ready to walk back on triumphantly after the walls were lowered to reveal to the audience that the performers had disappeared. Most thankfully, Pipper, with a flash of genius, bumped me up high enough in the water to rise above the water line and cast the Scatter spell. The crowd was quite thrilled with the performance, when we emerged from the stage entrances.
During the third act, I did not participate with the dangerous balancing acrobatics directly. I prepared the Feather Fall spell in case of emergency, and I did cast the Hallucinatory Terrain spell on the stage floor to ‘reveal’ a pit of lava under a narrow bridge that Beets and the Resilient Sphere ‘dangerously’ stood upon. We did fill the punters with quite an up and down thrill of dread several times with our combined magic. I do not mean to be arrogant, but I wouldn’t want to follow our act as another circus troupe.

Alfred and Gregor Liebling paid us fifty gold each for our last second replacement performances, and we also investigated the situation with the catering, and discovered the lion keeper had intentionally sabotaged the pies. None of us approved of the lion keeper’s actions, but I feel we could all sympathise a little with his concern that the new tyrannosaurus rex feature was going to out shadow and demote the lion keeper’s contribution to the circus. Though, a much better response to the situation would have been to redevelop the lion act!

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The ferocious enormity of the tyrannosaurus rex is astonishing to witness, and I daresay even more amazing to be yourself when polymorphed. Although surprisingly, I did feel more sturdy as a giant-ape. But, the immense power of the dinosaur jaw coupled with the sharpness of its teeth perform a deadly crushing attack far greater than the fists of a giant-ape, and the strength of a t-rex’s tail is equally formidable and not something I would wish to be hit with. All this said, Kavel still found little trouble modifying his wrestling moves to repeatedly take me down in my giant dinosaur form. When a t-rex is taken off of its feet, its metacarpal arms are very lamentable. King of the dinosaurs may be a form I can polymorph into, but Kavel is still king of the mat.

Kavel is keen to have monthly sparring sessions with me now, in my t-rex form. He feels I can now provide him a regular, much sought after ‘larger’ opponent. I didn’t think I would rue finally becoming a t-rex, and yet here we are. I will have to work on my bite attack!

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