Palindrome limps up the hill and drops elbow-first onto the fallen foe, though it looks rather more like collapsing in exhaustion than celebrating in triumph.
Palindrome paws at his head.
"Nyaaah! When did my internal narrator turn into an internal critic!"
"Well, so much for the stealthy approach," Neera quips. "What now?"
"Ha! Indeed!" laughs Palindrome,
"This is why we should have just started burning things."
He turns serious.
"You have served me well, Meatshield, and I shall ask of you one last service, then I shall release you (mostly) from my curse."
He takes a deep breath.
"Go to the marketplace and fetch for me a trained attack monkey or chimpanzee."
"If you fetch two, I shall be twice as grateful."
"Oh, and fetch a crossbow for Tander."
"And 'fetch' means 'steal'--or some other method that does not involve I or my companions expending money."
He turns away and busies himself tying up the elf...
And searching the elf's pockets...
And blinding the elf...
And cutting off the elf's thumbs...
And gagging the elf...
With the elf's thumbs and a very dirty rag used many times for wiping Palindrome's nose.
He pats the elf on the cheek.
"Looks like I've got the raw materials for a fine pair of elven boots."
The wizard trundles off to join Tander.
OOC: Yep. Spending those Healing Surges to restore all that lost health.
[sblock=Not to sound like a broken record, but...]Are we 2nd level yet?
We've been playing this story for about 6 months. That should give us about 500 XP.
The two bugbears got us about 133 XP.
We received a 125 XP bonus for roleplaying.
Two elf archers and three goblins is worth about 525 XP total -- divvied up to say 130 XP each.
Then, there are all the skill challenges: talking to the dowager at the start, acquiring a copy of the Screamer, following leads at the Gaston residence, visiting the library, and performing streetwise info-gathering. I don't know how much all of that is worth, but it should be a couple of hundred.
What do you say?[/sblock]
[sblock=And a blast from the past...]We never figured out to unveil the hidden text at the bottom of the Screamer. Halford said that we knew everything we needed to know to counter the magic and Palindrome could perform three Intelligence checks for clues, but it would reduce the overall XP that we would gain from figuring it out.
Since we're stuck and resting, Palindrome will ponder the paper (again).
[/sblock]