Shinobi here.
Now sit back on that tremendous chunk of flesh you call an ass and listen to my story.
Not that it’s much of a story so far. The time I beat Thor in a pissing contest – now THAT was a story. That boy could drink! Or that night I spent with those succubi . . . damn. I mean, damn. Worth every lost level, let me tell you. But this? This barely qualifies. But what the hell, right? So here we go.
I’ll skip the background. It reads like a bad Forgotten Realms novel. I honestly doubt that you are so bored you want me to drone on and on about this lord and that country and our great quest and blah blah blah and I’m slipping into a coma even as I speak. Trust me, I’m doing you a favor. It suffices to say that I, Shinobi Killfist, demigod and Ninja Extraordinaire was traveling north with three “companions”.
The first is a half-orc whose name escapes me. I just call him “Brother”. He’s quite stupid, in an endearing Homer Simpson sort of way.
The second is a dwarf whose name is something along the lines of Thror GreedyBastard. A cleric, of course, though he does an excellent impersonation of a turtle. He insists that he will be charging me for healing. If I ever got hit in combat, I would be quite worried about that, as I spent my last 10,000gp on this cute little Solar I know. Imprison me baby . . . mmmm. But I digress.
The third is a half-elf pseudo-paladin named Gwaedaheelahae. Or something. I stopped paying attention after the third syllable and the seventh vowel. He likes shooting things from far away. How un-elflike!
So anyway, there we are. Walking north. Slowly, because Thror is encased in heavy armor. You could cut the tension with a yawn . . . when suddenly, out of NOWHERE, we see this OLD MAN! Trying to SADDLE his HORSES!!!!
“Wow”, you’re saying. “That’s . . . that’s, well, really dull. Can you tell us the story about the succubi instead?” No, I can’t, Timmy. I have to tell this story, because it’s Morrow’s story hour, and I don’t want him getting all upset. So sit your ass back down.
Anyway, so he can’t saddle his horses. Stupid commoner. But it gives us a lame excuse to talk to him. Long story short, we help the pathetic sod and ask him about the town nearby.
I don’t remember much . . . but I do remember that he said there were bells there. And something about a dragon that got killed 50 years ago. And they make bells there. Also, he’s had some nightmares. And I did I mention the bells?
Great. Just great. Here we are walking into a Kevin Kulp module and we don’t even have anyone psionic. I’m not worried, of course, as I’m immune to psionics (it’s all a part of the Shinobi template), but my companions are as good as toast. D’oh!
So we talk a bit with Old Man Exposition, and he says that he’ll treat us for breakfast the next day in town. Well, I’m not one to turn down a free breakfast, and I can tell from the drool dripping down the dwarf’s chin that he’s not one to turn one down either. We accept.
It’s getting late, so we head into town. We hit the market, look at the local yokels, run into some nut who has had some weird visions . . . all pretty standard just-got-into-town stuff. A couple bumpkins bump into me (see, that’s why they call them bumpkins). They knock their coin purses into my pocket – a shame, that. When I get a spare moment I’ll have to turn over their goods to the local constable. Anyway, everyone seems kind of grumpy – you know, like they Haven’t Had Much Sleep Lately. If I were a smarter demigod, I’d say that this is a Clew.
Now that we’re through with the mingling, the local Mayor decides to hold an impromptu town meeting. He gives a little speech about the random crap happening – don’t ask for details, I didn’t take notes – and says that the local Heroes are out hunting for the Missing Children. Awwww, there are missing children. Isn’t that terrible? That would be a plot hook if I gave a crap. Maybe, though, there might be some money in finding them. That’s what Thror GreedyBastard thinks, and he talks to the local Sheriff-type about the possibility of a reward. He is, unfortunately, blown off – the Sheriff says that the Local Heroes can take care of it, thank you very much, yes they’ve been gone for a couple days but they’ll be back soon, you can count on it.
Riiiiiiiight.
So we go to bed. I will spare you the amusing tale of keeping Brother out of my room, not to mention my tormenting of the local innkeeper. Point is that at some point, we all fall asleep. And – Dum-dum-DUMMMMMMMMM! – we all have, as expected, Bad Dreams. I’ve had worse – I remember this one time I had a dream that I had nothing to eat but elf pudding for ten days in a row, that was pretty bad. But that’s not the point. The point is that we had bad dreams, thus further entangling us in the Plot. Got it? Good.
So we wake up. I wake up a little early, actually, and scoot around town doing a little spying. You know, just to make sure that everyone is on the up-and-up. I don’t see anything too suspicious, and so I head back to the inn. After all, Old Man Exposition is supposed to be feeding us, right?
Well, surprise surprise, Old Man Exposition isn’t there. I wonder. Could he be dead? That’d be predictable, I mean, the natural next step in the plotline of a well-written module. Elf-boy is concerned about the old man, and GreedyBastard and I are pissed off that the old fart welshed on his promise to feed us breakfast. Brother, well, Brother pretty much goes wherever you tell him to go. We point him south, towards the old man’s farm, and kick him in the shorts. He heads off in that direction, and we follow.
After about five minutes, we realize that he could be eating breakfast without us. This really pisses Brother and I off, and we decide to hustle the rest of the way, leaving the slo-mo and Elf-boy behind. We get there in twenty or so minutes. The place, well, the place is deserted. We sniff around a little bit, and are less than surprised to find Old Man Exposition’s corpse in the barn. I confess that we were a little surprised to find hooveprints embedded in his forehead. But these things happen, right?
Brother goes outside to snoop around while I search the old man’s body for clues. I find some, but not as much as I’d like. I proceed to the old fogey’s little hut, and proceed prying up floorboards and rummaging through cupboards looking for more clues. Nothing! I still can’t believe he didn’t have anything in there. Not an old sword, not a sack of silver pieces, nothing. Damn. Well, I suppose we can always sell the horses.
Where are those horses anyway? I head outside to check. Brother is busy counting his toes, trying to get up to ‘6’. (He has seven.) I smack him in the back of the head and point to the two horses that are giving us dirty looks from across the field. Hmph. We draw our swords and approach them slowly. The chance that these are demon-possessed horses that happened to have a grudge against Old Man Exposition and so they killed him is small (and certainly ridiculously stupid – I mean, wouldn’t demon-possessed horses have something better to do with their time?), but it’s possible.
Yeah. Possible.
One of them gives me a dirty look. I ignore it. Brother walks up to one of them and, I don’t know, tries to put the halter or saddle or some other sort of horse-gear on him. And then a horse gives HIM a dirty look. He doesn’t ignore it -- all of a sudden, he becomes paralyzed with fear, or boredom, or something. Well, that’s just great. Luckily for the pace of this story, our two companions show up a round later. Elf-boy shoots a horsie a couple of times, and the two of them get all scared. They gallop off. Brother is unhurt, even though a horse tried to chew on him. Clumsy horses! Brother and I chase them for a half-minute or so, but soon face the facts – the dumb horses can, unfortunately, run faster than we can. That’s what I get for trading those Boots of Cheat to that cleric of Aphrodite for a bj. We all have weaknesses . . . yes, even Shinobi.
Now that Thror’s here, I talk to him a bit about our newfound treasure. Namely, three horses and two cows. The horses are valued at oh, I don’t know, perhaps 75gp each, and maybe the cows are about 30gp apiece. Treasure treasure treasure! Thror starts drooling, and I confess my mouth moistens a bit. Brother goes back to counting his toes.
Elf –boy, on the other hand, isn’t too fond of our plan to take all of the old man’s possessions. Thror points out that if the old man had family, they’d have been here to cook for him and such, not to mention save him from being trampled by demon-possessed horses. Also, the old man owed us for helping him saddle his horses – and, he never did treat us for breakfast like he promised. Makes sense to me! Unfortunately, it didn’t make sense to elf-boy. *sigh* So we decide to not go through with it. After all, there are folks on the road who just HAPPEN to be walking by, keeping an eye on us and harassing us about what just happened. Nosy bastards. Anyway, the Sheriff finds out about the death, shows up to investigate an hour later, buys my story about how we killed two horses and chased two off (and so should be entitled to a reward, duh), and then leaves. Talk about your useless NPCs.
But what about Your Heroes, you ask? Well, we are, naturally, bored. And pissed off at the demon-horses. And so, we decide to track them – I mean, they’re horses. One of them is bleeding. This shouldn’t be too hard. And it isn’t – we track them south, then northwest, towards the Mysterious Old Mine Where The Dragon Was Killed Fifty Years Ago. As we get close, the trail grows cold – but, we find a metal plate that leads down into a mine of some sort. It’s been bent back a couple times. In we go!
We descend. We walk around a little. We enter a cavern. Three heads start screaming, so we destroy them. We enter a room filled with beetles and tacky dragon art. We get attacked by four trog-zombies, three of which I dispatch personally (Brother nails the fourth).
And that, friends, is where we left it. I’ll tell you more – promise – in ten days or so. If you’re good.
Shinobi Killfist
